Ebola patients and responders fled a hospital in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after it was attacked by an angry crowd, a health worker at the facility told Reuters.

It is the latest incident to hamper efforts to contain the deadly outbreak in eastern Congo, where mistrust of medical teams, community resistance and insecurity have repeatedly disrupted treatment and containment efforts.

Relatives of a patient were part of the crowd that stormed the Nyakunde Hospital in Ituri province on Wednesday afternoon and evening, throwing stones and damaging its perimeter fence, said François Berocan Uderos, a medical biologist at the hospital.

The crowd was responding to the death of a woman who had gone to the hospital to give birth but developed severe anaemia, he said.

‘Donate blood’

"Members of her family offered to donate blood, but the hospital refused because blood transfusions are prohibited during an Ebola outbreak," Uderos said.

The woman died at around 3 p.m., and the attack on the hospital began shortly afterwards, he said, adding that several of the up to 10 Ebola patients receiving treatment there had escaped.

"The medical team has since left the hospital. The generator supplying power to the facility is no longer functioning, and patients have fled," he said.

The latest Ebola outbreak, Congo's 17th, has so far led to 2,073 confirmed cases and 796 deaths, according to official figures.

There have been several attacks by angry crowds on health facilities since the outbreak was announced in May, recalling violence that unfolded during a 2018-2020 outbreak in eastern Congo that killed more than 25 health workers.