CHINA PERSPECTIVE

Beijing, May 22, 2026. The South China Morning Post reported on the events that occurred in Rwampara, in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where protesters set fire to tents at an Ebola treatment center after a family was denied the return of the body of one of their own. The Congolese police opened fire and used tear gas to disperse the protesters, according to Reuters witnesses cited by the Hong Kong daily.

The case is emblematic of the obstacles faced by health authorities on the ground. The victim at the center of the dispute was a local footballer, Eli Munongo Wangu, whose family contested the cause of death and categorically refused the secure burial protocol imposed by medical teams. However, according to the SCMP, the bodies of people who have died of Ebola remain highly contagious after death, and non-secure burials - during which relatives try to influence the body without protective equipment - are one of the main vectors of virus transmission.

Chinese coverage places this incident in the chronology of the ongoing epidemic. The first reported case died on April 24 in Bunia, the provincial capital of Ituri. His body was then repatriated to the city of Mongbwalu, where a funeral gathering many relatives would have accelerated the spread of the virus. The strain involved is that of Bundibugyo, for which no approved vaccine or treatment exists to date, a fact that the SCMP highlights to explain the particular gravity of this outbreak.

At the regional level, the World Health Organization has declared this epidemic a public health emergency of international concern. The provisional balance sheet reports 148 suspected deaths and nearly 600 suspected cases, but the WHO itself estimates that the actual number of cases is likely to be much higher than official figures. Two cases have also been reported in neighboring Uganda, which testifies to a transborder risk that Chinese media consider worrying.

The perspective proposed by the SCMP emphasizes the fracture between epidemiological requirements - imposed, in particular, by WHO protocols - and the cultural and emotional reality of affected communities. The refusal of devastated families to accept burials without ceremony or physical contact with the deceased is presented as a structural challenge, as much as a factor of amplification of the sanitary risk. This framing, characteristic of the treatment of Hong Kong press on African crises, articulates international expertise and local tensions without falling into value judgment.