The World Health Organization has escalated its public health risk assessment for the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, raising the national-level threat from “high” to “very high” in an official update released Friday.
During a press briefing in Geneva, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus outlined the tiered risk framework: while the outbreak poses a very high danger within DR Congo’s borders, it carries a high risk for the broader African region, and remains a low risk at the global scale. The WHO had already declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) for the outbreak earlier this week, though it stopped short of classifying the event as a pandemic.
The outbreak is driven by Bundibugyo, an uncommon strain of Ebola that currently has no licensed, widely available vaccine, and claims the lives of roughly one out of every three people it infects. As of the latest update, the outbreak has recorded 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths across DR Congo, with 82 confirmed cases and seven confirmed fatalities. The virus has already spread beyond DR Congo’s borders: neighboring Uganda has reported two confirmed cases, linked to travelers from the affected DR Congo region, including one death. WHO officials noted that the situation in Uganda currently remains stable.
Unlike more common Ebola variants, the rarity of the Bundibugyo strain has left public health responders with far fewer established countermeasures to slow transmission, even though it is slightly less deadly than other Ebola types. Like all Ebola viruses, Bundibugyo originates in wild animal populations, most commonly fruit bats, and typically spills over to humans when individuals handle or consume contaminated bushmeat.
Compounding the public health challenge, persistent violence and instability in the conflict-affected eastern region of DR Congo has severely hampered outbreak response efforts. Dr. Tedros emphasized that building community trust is critical to containing the spread, noting a recent incident where angry relatives set fire to a local hospital after health workers declined to release an Ebola patient’s body over fears of viral contamination.
Amid the growing risk, research teams are racing to develop targeted vaccines for the strain. A team of scientists at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom is advancing a candidate vaccine that could be ready for human clinical trials in as little as two to three months. There is no guarantee the candidate will prove effective, however, as rigorous preclinical animal testing and human trials will be required to confirm safety and efficacy. A second experimental vaccine candidate is also in development, but that candidate is not expected to be ready for testing for six to nine months.