Battling Mpox in the Outbreak’s Epicenter in Congo

Children wailed as their mothers washed their frail bodies covered with lesions. Adults coughed repeatedly, their throats so swollen that they could barely speak.

Mpox is spreading largely unchecked in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The New York Times visited a remote hospital in Kavumu overwhelmed with patients.

Cases have reached African countries like Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, and as far as Sweden and Thailand. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency.

In eastern Congo, mpox is infecting people in cities, villages and overcrowded camps that host millions of people displaced by ongoing conflict in the region.

More than 17,000 people in Africa have been infected with mpox, a disease that is closely related to smallpox. Mpox has killed nearly 600 people on the continent, or about 4 percent of those infected.

Most of them have been children.

They struggle to walk because of the rashes on their legs and groins.

They suffer from high fevers and headaches.

They struggle to breathe, to eat and drink through their swollen throats.

The disease is more fatal in children, many who are already weakened by malnutrition and other illnesses.

Another version of the virus causing the disease has spread among adults, especially through sexual contact.

There are no vaccines for mpox available in Congo.

Seven-year-old Nathalie winced one morning as a nurse injected an antibiotic in her arm.

It won't cure mpox, but it can help treat infections caused by the skin lesions.

Nathalie has been hospitalized for the past two weeks in Kavumu, in Congo's South Kivu province.

Her mother, Noelle Binja, washed Nathalie's limbs and put soothing powder on her sores. But Nathalie began to shake in pain and asked to rest. Her fever suddenly rose.

In a nearby barrack, Jean-Paul Bashibarakengera massaged his swollen throat, barely able to talk because of the pain, said his wife, Jacqueline Nabami. They had left their eight children behind to seek treatment.

In late July, Guylaine Makambo brought her 9-year-old daughter Ornella from the camp of Muja to the Munigi treatment center, near Goma, the provincial capital.

Ornella recovered from mpox within a week. But her mother returned to the center last week with two of her other children, Baraka and Rachel, aged 7 and 4, who had also contracted mpox and needed to be hospitalized.

Doctors say they are treating patients with scarce resources: They need more testing supplies, more protective equipment and more drugs and creams to help soothe the skin lesions.

"It's a huge challenge," said Pierre-Olivier Ngadjole, a doctor with the Swiss humanitarian organization Medair, which runs the Munigi treatment center.

At the hospital in South Kivu, Nathalie's mother, Ms. Binja, said she was aware that she could be infected with mpox because of the close contact with her daughter.

But she said, “I don’t want to leave her alone, I don’t want her to die.”