Mongboalu Hospital, near the DRC's eastern border with Uganda, is at the centre of the Ebola outbreak. The facility was attacked by young men demanding the bodies of relatives who had died be handed over to them. Medical staff were forced to evacuate the site, and tents set up by the aid organisation Doctors Without Borders were burned to the ground.

The hospital's director says the violence has made an already desperate situation even more difficult. There has never been an epidemic of this magnitude in the region. Rumours are circulating, with people claiming the disease came from this person or that.

Now they have turned words into actions. By burning down the facilities, they are slowing our response to the contamination and efforts to break the chain of transmission. The bodies of those who have died from Ebola are highly infect ...