‘Among the things he feared most was death’: the doctors and nurses dying on the Ebola frontline

Dr Tibenderana Katho Blaise, who died of Ebola on Tuesday at Bunia medical centre, is buried. He was the fifth hospital staff member to die. Photograph: Gradel Muyisa Mumbere/Reuters

When Dr Vladimir Maduali died of Ebola in the early hours of Sunday morning, he was the fourth member of staff at his hospital to be killed by the disease in as many days. Two days later, his colleague Dr Tibenderana Katho Blaise also died of the disease at the Bunia Evangelical medical centre, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Maduali graduated from the University of Bunia just three years ago and had been working in the Rwampara region, one of the areas of eastern DRC’s Ituri province worst hit by Ebola. The 30-year-old died at Rwampara’s isolation centre, where he had spent two days on oxygen therapy, according to his family.