By Jessica Donati, Fiston Mahamba and Rachael Kennedy
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo, May 7 (Reuters) – In Tshopo, a northeastern Congolese province blanketed in rainforest, rumours rippled through villages late last year claiming a mysterious illness had caused men’s genitals to atrophy.
Within days, testimonials proliferated on social media that amplified the imaginary threat, triggering a real-life panic that turned deadly before the government could react.
Angry mobs attacked and killed four health workers conducting vaccination research in an episode that took place in October, four officials and a survivor told Reuters – a deadly example of the rising danger posed by online health misinformation in Africa.
The violence has since spread to other parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In all, at least 17 killings related to the atrophy rumour have been reported, including the health workers, according to the WHO-led Africa Infodemic Response Alliance, which monitors fake health information. Reuters could not independently verify the other deaths.
In Congo, misinformation “really led to death and murder,” said the Nairobi-based alliance’s director Elodie Ho. “It started in communities. It spread into social media and local media. It was amplified by those actors.”
An examination of over a dozen video testimonials by the news agency, one of them viewed hundreds of thousands of times, found that churches helped spread the rumours in Tshopo. Overseas accounts and local news media also played a role.
In two of the videos, verified by the news agency, pastors and worshippers at two churches in provincial capital Kisangani stated prayer had cured alleged victims.
To establish the October events in Tshopo and the spread of misinformation elsewhere in Africa, Reuters examined medical studies and spoke to at least 20 people including local and regional officials, health workers and medical experts.
In response to questions from Reuters, Tshopo’s government spokesman said local officials took the rumour seriously, investigating claims by five alleged victims, and found no evidence the illness was real.
The government has moved to punish those responsible for fueling the panic. A local court sentenced a man who accused another of spreading the disease to 12 months in prison, and around a dozen people were arrested, the spokesman and another local official said.
MISTRUST ROOTED IN COLONIAL PAST
Prevalent in many parts of the world including the United States, a lack of faith in established medicine in parts of Africa is partly rooted in both the colonial era and more recent Western clinical trials.
Such mistrust is turbocharged by cheap artificial intelligence and widespread social media use, according to the African Union’s Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Uneven access to healthcare, weak rule of law and social media use play a part in the proliferation of rumours.
Dr. Jean Kaseya, Director General of the African Union’s Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said false information was keeping people away from lifesaving treatments.
“When populations do not trust vaccines, health workers, or government policies, it means they don’t access services that can help them survive,” he said.
As well as in Congo, attacks on community leaders and health workers have been recorded in Mozambique and Malawi, linked to false cholera-related information.
A WHO-managed healthline aiming to combat health misinformation and provide authoritative advice has seen calls surge from 3,331 in the first quarter of 2025 to 31,636 in the fourth.
Another WHO project, tracking interactions with communities, recorded around 500 incidents since its launch last year related to rumours, conspiracy theories and other false information.
CHURCHES AND THE CURE
Dr. Bavon Tangunza, manager for the AIRA alliance in Congo, received a warning about the fake illness in Tshopo early in October, he said, when a colleague flagged the rumor spreading in the province.
Video testimonials by alleged victims soon appeared online.
One showed a taxi driver on stage at a Christian gathering in Tshopo recounting how megachurch pastor Jules Mulindwa of the Pentecostal Church Light of the World, located in Kisangani, had cured him with prayer.
The taxi driver presented no evidence, and Reuters was unable to identify him by name. The news agency could not establish who filmed the video, which bears the church’s logo. Posted on TikTok by a prominent church worker, it was widely watched – and shared.
On the Facebook page of Boyoma Revolution, an online news site listed with an address in Marseille, France, the video has been viewed more than 300,000 times.
A self-styled prophet whose TikTok channel shows him with large crowds of followers and has over 400,000 subscribers, Mulindwa has previously falsely claimed to cure coronavirus, according to CongoCheck, an online factchecking platform.
He received a 12-month prison term for defamation last year but has not served the sentence, a lawyer for the prosecution told Reuters. In response to questions from the news agency, a close relative who works for Mulindwa denied he had been convicted.
Mulindwa did not respond to requests for comment.
Another video, posted online by a local church called Assemblée Chretienne de Kisangani on October 3, showed pastor Christophore Kabamba at the church claiming to have a miracle cure. The church did not respond to requests for comment.
James Baka, a Kisangani university student who appears in the clip, told Reuters in a Facebook message that he saw others miraculously cured by the pastor.
In response to a request for comment, Boyoma Revolution acknowledged there was no evidence for the illness, but did not answer questions about why the video was still on its page.
TikTok and Facebook, which bans harmful health information but has wound down fact-checking programs that helped it detect such content, did not immediately answer Reuters questions.
Tshopo Kwetu, a local news outlet, also shared posts about the fake illness. Director Gaston Mukendi told Reuters his outlet published information from a range of sources in line with its journalistic duties.
He pointed out an interview with a medical student debunking the rumour as an anxiety disorder.
ATTACKS EXPOSE VULNERABILITY OF HEALTH SYSTEM
Violence erupted on October 6, when health workers reached villages in the Isangi area of Tshopo to carry out vaccination surveys.
In Ilambi village, young men accused the health workers of secretly spreading the fake disease when they saw outsiders wearing high-visibility vests and carrying tablet computers, according to local officials and Jean-Claude Kengefuku Mbatu, a member of the health worker team who escaped.
Two others in the team, Placide Mbungi and John Tangakeya, both medical doctors, tried to explain their vaccine research, which was unrelated to the health scare.
They were killed on the spot, the officials and Mbatu said.
“They burned him alive, without even leaving me a trace of him,” Tangakeya’s widow Justine Tangakeya Basekauke told Reuters.
In nearby Yafira village, their colleagues Mathieu Mosisi and Kevin Ilunga sought help from a nearby policeman, but an angry crowd killed them as well, Tshopo health official Marie Jeanne Lebe told Reuters after a review of the incident was completed.
Reuters could not independently verify all of the events surrounding the deaths.
FALSE AND DANGEROUS
The day after the killings, on October 7, the governor’s office put out a statement printed and posted online declaring the rumours were false and dangerous.
Over the next month, AIRA’s Tangunza helped craft messages to be broadcast in local languages over the radio, online and through community workers, and held workshops to prepare responses to any future misinformation crises.
But the rumours continue to resurface, months later.
In an incident in March, a woman in Congo’s Lualaba province was accused of spreading the disease and lynched, while a second person survived the attack, AIRA said, citing local media reports. Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
Further complicating efforts to tackle false information, U.S. and other nations’ foreign aid cuts over the past year have left AIRA low on funds, director Ho told Reuters in an interview.
One of AIRA’s funders, The Gates Foundation, said a grant to AIRA was active through December. It did not say whether further grants were under consideration.
AIRA now has personnel in just three countries, including Tangunza in Congo, down from five.
An AI platform built to track online conversations to monitor for fake information is out of action because there is no money for the monthly subscriptions with providers, Ho said.
The WHO regional office said talks were underway to secure funding to sustain and scale up AIRA’s work.
(Reporting by Jessica Donati in Dakar, Fiston Mahamba in Goma, Congo and Rachael Kennedy in London; Additional reporting by Edward Carron, Fernando Robles, Benoit Nyemba, Victoire Mukenge and Julio-Cesar Chavez; Writing by Jessica Donati; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Frank Jack Daniel)
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