Caught Between Killers: Ebola on One Side, Islamic State on the Other

So many people are dying of Ebola that their bodies have been stacked, one atop the other, on makeshift racks in a shed by the hospital gate. Medicine, IVs and basic protections have been so scarce that three-quarters of Ebola patients in this besieged Congolese town have died. When the outbreak was first detected in May, it resembled a single, giant blaze, with infections concentrated in a handful of towns in one province.

It has since morphed into a far bigger, more elusive foe, creeping into eight provinces and splintering into numerous hot spots as its moves through one of the world’s great rainforests. Health workers have corralled the virus where it was first detected, but infections are soaring elsewhere. Biakato, a small town deep in the rainforest, suddenly accounted for as many as one-quarter of new cases nationally.

Yet its beleaguered residents were left almost entirely on their own, with dangerously little to defend themselves against the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in history . “We see the same mistakes as before,” said Dr.