The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is grappling with its 17th recorded Ebola outbreak, marked by a grim rise in fatalities and a troubling lack of targeted medical countermeasures for the rare strain involved. In a press briefing held in Kinshasa on Saturday, DRC Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba issued a stark warning about the unfolding crisis: the currently circulating Bundibugyo strain has no approved vaccine or specific antiviral treatment, and carries a mortality rate as high as 50 percent.
By Saturday, official death counts from the outbreak had climbed to 80, up from the 65 fatalities reported just 24 hours earlier. Health authorities also confirmed the outbreak has already crossed international borders, claiming one life in neighboring Uganda. The victim, a 59-year-old Congolese national, died in Kampala earlier this week after being admitted to hospital, and genetic testing confirmed he was infected with the Bundibugyo strain— a variant first identified in 2007. His remains were repatriated to the DRC the same day he passed away.
The outbreak, formally confirmed by African health officials on Friday, is centered in DRC’s northeastern Ituri province, which shares borders with both Uganda and South Sudan. Currently available Ebola vaccines only offer protection against the more common Zaire strain, which was first documented in 1976 and carries an even higher fatality rate of 60 to 90 percent.
Public health experts warn the risk of widespread transmission is particularly high in this region, due to frequent and unregulated cross-border population movement between the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan. As of Saturday, DRC health authorities reported 246 suspected cases of infection across the affected area. Patient zero, the index case for this outbreak, was a nurse who first sought care at a health facility in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, on April 24 after developing classic Ebola symptoms: fever, hemorrhaging, and vomiting.
Speaking on Friday, Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, described the event as a large-scale outbreak that demands urgent international attention. This is the first new Ebola outbreak in the DRC since August 2023, when a smaller outbreak in the country’s central region killed 34 people before being declared eradicated in December. The deadliest Ebola outbreak in DRC history, which ran between 2018 and 2020, claimed nearly 2,300 lives.
First identified nearly 50 years ago, Ebola is a deadly viral hemorrhagic fever that is thought to originate in bat populations. The virus spreads through direct contact with infected bodily fluids or contaminated blood, and infected individuals only become contagious after they begin showing symptoms. The incubation period can last up to 21 days, making contact tracing and outbreak control particularly challenging. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), historical Ebola outbreaks have recorded mortality rates ranging from 25 percent to as high as 90 percent, depending on the strain and access to care. Overall, the virus has killed roughly 15,000 people across Africa over the past five decades, even with recent advances in vaccine and treatment development.
The WHO has already moved to respond to the crisis, announcing Friday that it is preparing to airlift five tonnes of critical supplies—including personal protective equipment and infection prevention gear—from Kinshasa to the affected region. However, mounting an effective response poses major logistical challenges. The DRC is home to more than 100 million people, covers an area four times the size of France, and suffers from severely underdeveloped transportation and communication infrastructure that slows the movement of personnel and supplies to remote outbreak zones. In its statement, the WHO highlighted the deep uncertainty surrounding the current outbreak’s trajectory, noting: “Given the uncertainties and severity of the illness, there is concern about the scale of transmission in affected communities.”