Unlike other residents of Mongbwalu, a town at the heart of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo¡¯s (DRC) latest devastating Ebola outbreak, Laureine Sakiya believes that the blood-letting virus exists after seeing some of her neighbours die.

Already suspicious of the Congolese state following decades of neglect and conflict, many in the outbreak¡¯s epicenter in the northeastern Ituri province are split between criticism of the government¡¯s response and denial of the disease¡¯s very existence.

Gold-diggers and hawkers crisscross mineral-rich and conflict-torn Ituri. Mud-covered motorbikes of traveling Congolese are a regular sight in Mongbwalu, some 100 kilometers from Uganda and just 200 kilometers away from unstable South Sudan.