Ebola crosses a porous border

Excerpt:

This week the Ebola virus crossed from the Democratic Republic of Congo into Uganda, but there are reasons to hope it can be contained on that side of the border, reports Olivia Acland.

On Monday morning, a family was heading from the Democratic Republic of Congo back home to Uganda, after a funeral. The grandfather had died from Ebola and his daughter had gone to the country a few weeks earlier, to try and nurse him back to health.

By the time the family reached the Ugandan border, most of them were suffering from high fever and diarrhoea. Border officials took their temperatures and immediately sent them to a health clinic in the Congolese border town. Here, they were put in isolation, awaiting tests. But after dark, six members of the family, including a five-year-old boy, slipped out of the clinic and set off down a desolate and poorly policed road crossing into Uganda. A few days later both the boy and his grandmother had died.

• 16 June 2019; Olivia Acland is DR Congo correspondent for the Economist