Ebola: public trust, intermediaries, and rumour in the DR Congo

In The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Patrick Vinck and colleagues1 report on institutional trust and misinformation in relation to the most recent Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo. This Article is timely and important. As the authors imply, the Congolese people have been taught by bitter experience to distrust authority, in ways that make it difficult to sustain public health interventions. The cancellation of the 2018 presidential election in the Ebola-affected regions of Beni and Butembo is, for example, strongly
linked in the public mind with the rigging of the national ballot.