The response to the Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is failing to bring the epidemic under control, medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said.
Despite new vaccines and treatments, people with Ebola have been dying in their communities because they do not trust the health response enough to come forward, MSF President Joanne Liu said at a press conference in Geneva.
MSF recently suspended its operations in the epicentre of the outbreak - in Katwa and Butembo in North Kivu province - following violent attacks on Ebola treatment centres.
Tackling Ebola in DR Congo was always going to be a huge challenge - decades of conflict mean health services are weak or non-existent, different communities fear one another, and they fear the security services.
Attempts by the authorities in DR Congo to force people to comply with Ebola control measures have proved counterproductive.
There have been dozens of attacks on health workers - meanwhile Ebola victims stay in hiding, no-one knows where they are or who they have been in contact with.
MSF estimates that in the last three weeks, 43% of new cases in the epicentre of the outbreak had no known links to other cases - that means Ebola is not being successfully tracked, and if it is not tracked, it cannot be controlled.
The charity says the Ebola response must change - no more coercion to track and treat patients, and more choice for families on how to manage the disease.
According to the WHO, 569 people have died since the outbreak began seven months ago.
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