KINSHASA, June 5 -- While COVID-19 epidemic is still spreading, a new round of Ebola and malaria quietly breaks out in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In order to strengthen the epidemic prevention and control, the 23rd Chinese peacekeeping engineering contingent to DRC dispatched personnel and vehicles to the Kawum area on June 3, setting out the construction of a temporary quarantine station for the peacekeeping forces.

The station can accommodate 250 people, and the United Nations peacekeepers newly deployed to the mission area will be quarantined and observed there. The construction task requires that within one month, there would be 49 residential flats to be repaired, three new toilets to be built, overall water and electricity systems to be improved, roads to be hardened and sanitation to be cleaned.

The Chinese engineering contingent dispatched 40 members and 12 mechanical vehicles to carry out the operation. The team worked out a special anti-epidemic plan, which houses the construction personnel separately in different barracks and designates isolated operation areas for personnel and equipment, so as to avoid cross-contact of internal personnel as far as possible.

It is learnt that Chinese contingent is the only professional engineering construction force in the southern theater of MONUSCO so far, which has undertaken almost all the UN engineering construction tasks in the mission area.