Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) health minister, Oly Ilunga Kalenga, resigned from his post on Monday after DRC President Felix Tshisekedi’s office assigned management of the response to the Ebola outbreak to a multi-disciplinary team that would report directly to the President reported Africa News.
Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe has been appointed as the coordinator of the nation’s Ebola technical committee.
Kalenga, who had been health minister for two years, posted the resignation letter on his Twitter account on Monday in which he decried interference in the management of the response to the outbreak. He said his resignation was in reaction to President Tshisekedi’s announcement made on Saturday that he would take over direct supervision of the response to the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo.
“As a result of your decision to place the response to the Ebola outbreak under your direct supervision … I hereby submit my resignation as health minister,” Ilunga said. “As in any war, because that is what this is, there cannot be several centers of decision-making for risk of creating confusion.”
In the resignation letter, the outgoing minister said the move could jeopardize efficiency, stability, and consistency in the DRC’s response to Ebola. He also pushed back against international pressure to deploy and test a second vaccine manufactured by US-based firm Johnson & Johnson, saying that introducing a second vaccine would complicate already-challenging messaging to populations that are suspicious of the current vaccine.
The Ebola outbreak that emerged in DRC’s eastern North Kivu and Ituri provinces last August has already killed over 1,700 people, more than two-thirds of those who contracted it. The ongoing outbreak is the second-deadliest on record, following one in West Africa during 2014 and 2015 that killed more than 11,000 people.
Last week, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak in eastern Congo to be an international health emergency.
