(Bloomberg) — For medical and aid workers scrambling to contain an outbreak of mpox on the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern flank, the location couldn’t be worse. A strain of the virus — which causes lesions that can result in disfigurement, blindness, and even death — has erupted around the gold-mining town of Kamituga, where about a quarter of a million people live.
It’s an area that thousands of small-scale, individual miners travel in and out of, attracting scores of sex workers while truckers ply routes between Congo and the neighboring nations of Burundi and Rwanda, and on to Tanzania.
Add to that the presence of 4.2 million internally displaced people, driven from their homes by years of intermittent conflict. Many of them are staying in crowded camps in the province, South Kivu, and neighboring North Kivu, which is a recipe for the rapid spread of a disease that’s killing the weak and malnourished, often children.
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