A radio host who helped spread the word in the fight against Ebola has been stabbed to death at his home in northeast Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), the army said on Sunday.
The motive for the murder in the town of Lwemba in the troubled Ituri region was unknown, but it came as health authorities were set to introduce a new vaccine against the disease in unaffected areas.
The attackers killed 35-year-old Papy Mumbere Mahamba and wounded his wife before burning down their home late on Saturday, General Robert Yav, the commander of Congolese army forces in the Ituri town of Mambasa, told reporters.
Steve Ahuka, national coordinator of the fight against Ebola, confirmed that a local worker in Lwemba had been killed.
A journalist at Radio Lwemba, the local radio station where Mahamba worked, also confirmed the details.
“Our colleague Papy Mumbere Mahamba was killed at his home by unknown attackers” who stabbed him to death, Jacques Kamwina told reporters .
The Observatory for Press Freedom in Africa, based in the DR Congo, called on the Ituri authorities to conduct a “serious investigation” into the killing.
The DR Congo in August last year declared an Ebola epidemic in the conflict-wracked eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri, bordering Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
The highly contagious hemorrhagic fever has killed 2,185 people so far, according to the latest official figures.
Efforts to roll back the epidemic have been hampered not only by fighting, but also by resistance within communities to preventative measures, care facilities and safe burials.
It is the DR Congo’s 10th Ebola epidemic and the second-deadliest on record after an outbreak that struck West Africa in 2014-2016, claiming more than 11,300 lives.
Health workers have repeatedly come under attack.
A Cameroonian doctor from the WHO, Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, was shot dead in April in an attack on a hospital in North Kivu.
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