Will Ebola have an impact on the World Cup?
While ticket prices, heat and politics have made headlines, Ebola has been a World Cup worry for DR Congo. The African nation have qualified for
While ticket prices, heat and politics have made headlines, Ebola has been a World Cup worry for DR Congo. The African nation have qualified for the first time in 52 years, but does the outbreak have wider implications? The outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, specifically the Bundibugyo virus disease, has already caused 91 deaths in the country. The latest data from the World Health Organization, released on June 6, shows there have been 515 confirmed cases in the country and 19 in neighboring Uganda, which has seen at least two deaths. Isabel Brosius, an infectious disease specialist from the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, is in DR Congo. She told DW that the outbreak is devastating a country that has been wracked by conflict on its eastern flank and a number of other significant public health threats. "Ebola can be a very scary disease. So definitely when this happens in a population that is not always super health literate, that's a very scary thing. People start to wonder why is this happening or what caused it. And then if you have a deep rooted mistrust in government or other actors and fake news or messages, it just adds on to the general sense of insecurity." Has Ebola affected the World Cup yet?
DR Congo qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 52 years back in April but their preparations for their opener against Portugal on June 17 have been impacted by the Ebola outbreak. World Cup hosts the United States, where DR Congo are to be based, require all non-US citizens who have been in DR Congo, Uganda or South Sudan to spend 21 days outside those countries and be symptom-free before they would be permitted to enter the US. Despite the outbreak being currently confined to the Ituri Province, in the country's north-east, the squad's training camp, slated for the capital Kinshasa, several thousand kilometers away in the west, was moved to Belgium where the squad trained in a COVID-19-style "bubble." All of DR Congo's squad play their club football outside the country and reports suggest none of the players have visited of late. A pre-tournament friendly against Chile, originally due to take place in Spain, will now be played behind closed doors in the French city of Orleans on Tuesday, after Spanish local authorities blocked the initial match on public health grounds. With many teams already in North America, DR Congo's arrival in Houston will give them relatively little time to acclimatize. "The only thing I can say is that we're used to adapting, and whatever happens, we'll have no problem adapting to all these situations," DR Congo coach Sebastien Desabre said.
The BriefWire