分类： health

An ongoing Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) took an unexpected turn earlier this week, when a 6-year-old confirmed Ebola patient—abducted from her treatment ward by armed men alongside her mother—has been located and is reported to be in stable condition. Local health official Dr. Lubambo Maboko Gaston confirmed the update to the BBC on Friday, two days after he first announced the abduction that drew international attention to growing unrest around Ebola response efforts in the region.

According to Dr. Gaston, the pair were taken by a group of armed, angry men from a hospital in Butembo, a major city in eastern DRC, on Monday. It remains unclear whether the abductors had prior personal connections to the child or her family, but the abduction fits a pattern of rising hostility toward Ebola treatment facilities that has hampered outbreak response for weeks. On Friday, the girl and her mother voluntarily arrived at an alternative Ebola treatment center located roughly 18 kilometers outside Butembo, where medical teams have since assessed the child’s condition as stable and improving. “Her condition is currently considered stable,” Dr. Gaston confirmed in a statement to reporters.

Hostility toward outbreak response teams is not a new development during this outbreak. To date, the event has killed more than 230 people and recorded 890 confirmed cases across eastern DRC, with treatment centers facing repeated attacks from local communities driven by fear and misinformation. Just last month, police in Mongbwalu were forced to fire warning shots into the air to disperse angry crowds that attempted to seize the bodies of Ebola victims from a local health facility. Days prior, residents of Rwampara, a small town 85 kilometers southeast of Mongbwalu, set fire to hospital isolation tents after officials blocked them from retrieving the body of a man who had died from suspected Ebola.

Public health experts stress that the bodies of Ebola victims carry extremely high viral loads, and unsanctioned burial preparations are a major driver of new transmission. Safe, regulated burial protocols are one of the most critical tools for containing spread, but deep-rooted misinformation has left many local residents distrustful of these measures. “People are not properly informed or sensitised about what is happening,” local politician Luc Malembe explained to the BBC last month. “For a certain segment of the population, especially in remote areas, Ebola is an invention by outsiders – it does not exist. They believe it is the NGOs and hospitals creating this to make money, and this is tragic.”

The outbreak was officially declared by DRC authorities on May 15, though public health officials later confirmed that transmission had gone undetected in remote communities for weeks before the declaration. A complicating factor for response teams is that the outbreak is caused by Bundibugyo, a rare strain of Ebola that currently has no approved vaccine. The World Health Organization (WHO) has projected it could take months to develop and deploy an effective vaccine for this strain.

The scale of the outbreak has already drawn grim projections from global health leaders. This week, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the outbreak could become one of the largest Ebola events in recorded history, echoing an earlier assessment from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cross-border spread has already been recorded in neighboring Uganda, which has confirmed 19 cases and two deaths since the outbreak began. However, the WHO reported this week that Uganda has not recorded any new confirmed cases since June 5, a hopeful sign that containment measures there are working.

In DRC, the national ministry of health has said it is ramping up core response measures, including expanding community surveillance, scaling up contact tracing, and building out dedicated treatment infrastructure across affected towns. The WHO has committed $3.9 million to response efforts, while Africa CDC has approved a $319 million budget to support coordinated action across the region.

Nearly all confirmed cases are concentrated in three eastern DRC provinces: Ituri, South Kivu and North Kivu—the same region where the 6-year-old patient was abducted. Ituri remains the epicenter of transmission, accounting for more than 90% of all confirmed infections. Ongoing armed conflict in the region has created additional barriers to effective response, the WHO has warned. The M23 rebel group currently controls large swathes of both North and South Kivu, leaving response teams unable to access many remote communities where transmission may be spreading undetected.

DAKAR, SENEGAL – Just one month after the Ebola outbreak was formally detected across the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern region and neighboring Uganda, the death toll has surpassed 200, marking it the most severe early-stage Ebola outbreak on record, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) confirmed in a Thursday briefing.

Dr. Wessam Mankoula, a medical epidemiologist with Africa CDC, told reporters that the outbreak has already recorded 894 confirmed cases as of this week—three times the caseload seen at the same 30-day mark during Uganda’s 2000 Ebola outbreak, which registered 224 cases at the corresponding point. The higher current count is partially explained by delayed detection: health authorities only confirmed the outbreak’s existence on May 15, weeks after community transmission was first suspected. Since last week alone, confirmed cases have jumped 38%, and the virus has already spread to 32 separate health zones across eastern Congo.

What makes this outbreak particularly dangerous is its strain: it is caused by the rare Bundibugyo Ebola virus, for which no approved vaccines or specific antiviral treatments exist. Early testing did not screen for this less common variant, as most of Congo’s 16 previous Ebola outbreaks were linked to the Zaire strain, a more widespread variant for which effective vaccines are already available. As of this week, 74 infected patients across the affected region have recovered, and researchers are currently advancing development of experimental treatments including targeted monoclonal antibodies for Bundibugyo.

Over 90% of all confirmed cases are concentrated in Congo’s eastern Ituri Province, with additional cases detected in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces. The virus has already crossed the international border into Uganda, where 19 confirmed cases and two deaths have been documented to date.

Public health officials are facing steep barriers to bringing the outbreak under control, starting with critical gaps in contact tracing. Africa CDC estimates that for the 894 confirmed cases, between 17,000 and 35,000 close contacts should be monitored for symptoms. As of Thursday, only roughly 4,000 contacts—less than 15% of the projected total—have been located and are under active evaluation.

“We are still far from controlling the situation of this outbreak,” Mankoula said, noting that long-running insecurity and geographic isolation in Ituri have hobbled tracing efforts. Decades of armed conflict in the province have displaced nearly one million people, according to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, leading to constant population movement as communities flee violence. Ituri’s dense forests, underdeveloped road infrastructure, and scattered remote villages mean accessing affected communities can take multiple days of travel. Tracing efforts are further complicated by the large population of artisanal miners working in the region’s mineral-rich interior, who move frequently between isolated mining sites with little official oversight.

Compounding these challenges are critical gaps in funding and personnel. Of the more than $900 million in international pledges committed to the outbreak response, only $90 million has actually been disbursed to frontline response teams, Mankoula said. Africa CDC estimates it requires 540 trained response personnel to fully address the crisis, and currently has only 84 staff deployed to the affected region.

Mankoula added that the organization is working urgently to accelerate the release of committed funds, saying: “We’re keeping our fingers crossed those new pledges will be fast tracked, and we’ll be following up with different member states and different partners about their commitment to turn those pledges into actual money released to their affected countries or partners.”

In the bustling, unusually quiet Nyamurongo cemetery of Bunia, the capital of Ituri province in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, fresh mounds of dirt dot the grassy ground at a rate no resident has seen before. This city sits at the epicenter of an ongoing Ebola outbreak that has claimed nearly 200 lives in recent months, and every new grave tells a story of devastating loss and a desperate fight to stop the virus’s spread.

For Joel Lonza Makumbu, the devastation of the outbreak is not an abstract public health statistic—it is a personal catastrophe that has gutted his entire family. Standing knee-deep in the soil of his mother’s fresh grave, just one day after burying his father, Makumbu describes this as his sixth trip to the cemetery in a short stretch of weeks. Ebola has already taken his parents, three sisters, and a brother-in-law, and three more of his relatives remain in treatment centers fighting the disease. “I want to say for all people [to hear] that Ebola is true,” he stresses, a urgent warning to those who still doubt the danger of the virus amid widespread local misinformation.

The current outbreak is driven by the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which kills roughly one in four people it infects. Transmitted exclusively through direct contact with infected bodily fluids—including blood, semen, breast milk, vomit, and urine—the virus demands strict public health protocols to halt transmission, and modified, safe burial practices are widely recognized as one of the most critical interventions to stop new infections.

Traditional Ituri funeral customs are deeply rooted in community and cultural belief: for generations, families have washed and dressed the deceased in fine clothing—women often in wedding gowns, complete with makeup—before holding multi-day ceremonies full of singing and celebration, as community members believe death is a journey to the world of ancestors, not an end. Many of these long-held practices, however, put grieving family members at extreme risk of infection, so public health teams have had to negotiate sensitive changes to these rituals.

Today, no large crowds of mourners gather at Nyamurongo, and the traditional pre-burial body washing carried out by family members is strongly discouraged. Burials that once took days of preparation now are completed in 10 minutes, with the Ebola deceased immediately sealed in leak-proof body bags before interment. But rather than forcing communities to abandon their traditions entirely, international aid groups have worked to adapt safety protocols to honor cultural needs, wherever possible without putting lives at risk.

“We need to be very close to the communities and engage with them very closely and make sure that they understand what’s going on, they’re informed and they consent,” explains Maria Munoz-Bertrand, public health emergency coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC). To accommodate families, the IFRC now places sealed body bags inside solid coffins fitted with small transparent panels that allow mourners to glimpse their loved one’s body; some body bags even have clear film at the top to reveal the deceased’s face. “If the family asks for something special to be included in the procedure, as long as it respects the infection prevention and control measures, and it doesn’t put anyone at risk, we will try to accommodate the wishes of the family as much as possible, because we understand that it’s a very difficult time for families,” Munoz-Bertrand adds.

On a recent trip with an IFRC burial team to collect a body from Bunia’s Ebola treatment centre, the delicate balance of grief, culture and safety is on full display. Outside a makeshift transit morgue tent, family members wait along the roadside to accompany their loved one to the cemetery, including one grieving mother who had just lost her child to the virus. Health workers in full personal protective equipment seal the body bag inside the coffin, disinfect their path, and retreat, before six IFRC volunteers, also fully protected, retrieve the coffin for transport.

For 34-year-old mother of four, whose body the team retrieved that day, her father Simone Nyal watches the modified process from a distance, still reeling from how quickly the virus took his daughter. “She was ill for just one week before she succumbed. She has left us her four children – I don’t know how we will cope,” he says. At the cemetery, the woman’s mother and sister wait by the open grave, and the burial is completed in less than 10 minutes. Volunteers decontaminate their gear and depart, leaving gravediggers to fill the plot.

Negotiating these changes requires a unique blend of cultural literacy and patience, says Julienne Anoko, an anthropologist working with the World Health Organization (WHO) who has responded to multiple Ebola outbreaks across Central and West Africa. Anoko and her team spend days listening to grieving families, acknowledging their pain, and drawing on local cultural knowledge to help communities accept the necessary changes to burial practices.

The most challenging negotiations, Anoko says, surround the burial of pregnant women who die of Ebola. Local tradition holds that a pregnant woman must “travel light” to the afterlife, requiring the fetus to be removed before burial—a practice that would expose family members to massive amounts of infectious bodily fluids. To address this, Anoko frames the restriction through a cultural lens, explaining to communities that their own ancestors would have approved of the modified practice to protect the living. “We negotiate to make the family accept the unacceptable. Sometimes it may take three days, but we negotiate, and I use the knowledge of their culture,” she says.

Over years of working through outbreaks, Anoko has built deep trust with local communities, bridging the gap between public health science and traditional cultural values to make safety protocols acceptable. Even with this progress, the work of containing the outbreak remains far from over. Misinformation still circulates, and for families like Makumbu’s, the pain of loss is far from over—with more loved ones still fighting for survival in treatment centres. As he finishes covering his mother’s grave, Makumbu leaves with a stark warning for the world: Ebola is real, and it continues to tear through communities in Ituri, leaving few families untouched.

In the conflict-stricken eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, a glimmer of hope has emerged amid a rapidly spreading Ebola crisis: a 16-month-old infant and his mother have successfully overcome the deadly virus and been discharged from a local treatment center. The pair left the Rwampara Treatment Center near Bunia, the capital of Ituri province — the current epicenter of the outbreak — on Tuesday, alongside five other patients who also achieved full recovery from Ebola.

For Kahindo Mireille Pierrette, the mother of the recovering infant, the relief and joy of her child’s survival are overwhelming. “The joy is immense given the state he was in at first,” she shared. “If you had seen him before, you wouldn’t believe he could have this strength now.” Pierrette explained that she rushed her son to the treatment center in late May, after he developed frightening Ebola symptoms: uncontrollable bleeding from the mouth and nose, and extreme weakness that left him barely able to move. Dr. Modet Camara, a clinical lead at the treatment facility, confirmed that the infant received a positive Ebola result via PCR testing on his second day of admission, and was immediately placed on targeted supportive care including antibiotics to manage secondary infections.

As of Tuesday, Congo’s Ministry of Health has confirmed 837 Ebola cases and 196 confirmed deaths since the outbreak was formally declared on May 15. However, public health officials warn the true case count is almost certainly higher, because the virus began spreading undetected for weeks before official confirmation was announced. To date, only 49 patients across the affected region have recovered from the virus, according to government data.

What makes this outbreak particularly challenging for response teams is that it is driven by the rare Bundibugyo Ebola strain, a variant for which no approved vaccines or specific antiviral treatments currently exist. This marks a departure from Congo’s 16 previous Ebola outbreaks, which were overwhelmingly caused by the more common Zaire strain — a variant for which an effective, approved vaccine is already available.

More than 90% of all current cases are concentrated in Ituri province, though infections have also been documented in neighboring North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, and the virus has already crossed the international border into Uganda. Speaking during a virtual meeting of African heads of state on Tuesday, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director-General Jean Kaseya issued a stark warning about the outbreak’s trajectory: if spread is not rapidly contained, it could surpass the 2014–2016 West African outbreak to become the deadliest Ebola event on record. Kaseya highlighted that tens of thousands of close contacts of confirmed Ebola patients have not yet been traced and monitored, creating a large pool for potential further transmission.

The 2014 West African outbreak remains the worst Ebola event in recorded history, with more than 28,000 confirmed cases and over 11,000 reported deaths across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Multiple structural challenges are hampering containment efforts in eastern Congo. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that years of ongoing armed conflict have displaced nearly one million people across Ituri province. As communities flee persistent attacks and move frequently through the region’s vast, dense forest landscape, which is crisscrossed by poor roads and dotted with remote villages that can take days to reach, contact tracing teams struggle to track exposed individuals and limit new transmissions. Additional complications come from the region’s large population of artisanal miners, who regularly move between remote mining sites in the mineral-rich province, making consistent monitoring of potential exposures nearly impossible. Local cultural preferences for traditional healers over formal hospital care have also slowed response efforts, as many infected people delay seeking treatment and continue to interact with their communities while contagious.

A violent attack on an Ebola treatment facility in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has triggered an urgent search operation for a 6-year-old confirmed Ebola patient and her mother, who were abducted from the hospital by armed men armed with knives, local health authorities have confirmed.

According to a formal statement released by Dr. Lubambo Maboko Gaston, a senior local health official, the pair were taken from Wanamahika Hospital in the conflict-affected city of Butembo by what he described as a group of ‘very angry’ assailants. It remains unclear whether the attackers had any prior personal connection to the child or her family, but the incident fits a dangerous pattern of rising violence against Ebola response infrastructure that has plagued the current outbreak.

Deep-seated suspicion and misinformation around Ebola treatment efforts have created a volatile environment for medical responders across the affected region. In a conversation with Reuters, Dr. Gaston issued an urgent appeal to the abducted pair to voluntarily turn themselves in at a formal health facility, warning that delayed care would not only put their own health at severe risk of worsening outcomes but also threaten the health of their family and community by enabling further virus transmission.

This attack is not an isolated event. During the current outbreak, Ebola treatment centers have been targeted repeatedly by community members distrustful of medical efforts. Official counts from response teams have already confirmed 840 total cases and nearly 200 deaths from the virus to date.

Just last month, tensions boiled over in two separate communities. In Mongbwalu, local police were forced to fire warning shots into the air to disperse an angry crowd that attempted to forcibly retrieve the bodies of Ebola victims from a local health facility. Just a few days before that incident, residents of Rwampara — a town located 85 kilometers southeast of Mongbwalu — set fire to hospital isolation tents after authorities blocked them from collecting the body of a man who had died from suspected Ebola.

Health experts emphasize that the bodies of people who die from Ebola carry an extremely high viral load, making them far more infectious than living patients in most cases. Unregulated contact and traditional burial preparations with infected remains are one of the most common drivers of new Ebola clusters, making these forced retrievals an especially major public health threat.

Local leaders say much of the unrest stems from widespread misinformation that has spread through rural and remote parts of the affected provinces. ‘People are not properly informed or sensitised about what is happening. For a certain segment of the population, especially in remote areas, Ebola is an invention by outsiders – it does not exist,’ local politician Luc Malembe Malembe explained to the BBC in an interview last month. ‘They believe it is the NGOs and hospitals creating this to make money, and this is tragic.’

Complicating response efforts further, the current outbreak is caused by Bundibugyo, a rare strain of Ebola that has no licensed vaccine currently available for use. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed that it will take months of development and testing before a specific vaccine for this strain is ready for widespread deployment.

The abduction took place on Monday in North Kivu, one of three eastern DRC provinces currently at the center of the outbreak, alongside Ituri and South Kivu. Ituri province remains the epicenter of ongoing transmission. The WHO has repeatedly warned that ongoing armed conflict in the region is a major barrier to containing the spread of the virus. The M23 rebel group currently occupies large swathes of both North and South Kivu, leaving vast areas inaccessible to medical response teams.

More coverage of the DRC Ebola outbreak and other news from across the African continent is available at BBCAfrica.com, and audiences can follow BBC Africa’s reporting on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

In the conflict-torn eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a decades-long battle against Ebola has entered a new, particularly challenging phase, as deep-seated cultural beliefs, widespread misinformation, and systemic mistrust of modern medicine continue to cost lives during the country’s 17th recorded outbreak of the deadly virus.

First identified in the biodiverse Congo Basin in 1976, Ebola remains misunderstood by many communities across central Africa. For countless residents, the onset of the virus’ brutal hemorrhagic symptoms is interpreted as a spiritual curse or affliction brought by outsiders, driving them to seek healing from traditional healers and faith leaders rather than formal medical facilities. This pattern has repeated itself in the current outbreak, centered in Congo’s Ituri Province, where delayed care and unregulated gatherings of worshippers have contributed to a rising death toll that has already reached at least 181 people.

What makes this outbreak especially alarming is its cause: the Bundibugyo strain, a rare variant of Ebola for which no officially approved vaccines or antiviral treatments currently exist. The outbreak was formally confirmed on May 15, though public health experts suspect infections may have begun as early as February, when initial tests targeted a different Ebola variant, delaying detection and response. The World Health Organization quickly designated the event a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and the U.S. government has since implemented a temporary entry ban for non-U.S. passport holders who have recently traveled to Congo, Uganda, or South Africa.

In Ituri’s epicenter town of Bunia, dangerous misinformation has further undermined response efforts. One pervasive rumor claims the virus is spread by malicious actors who plant enchanted charms wrapped in dollar bills in public pit latrines. “Some people still describe Ebola as something mysterious, spiritual, or brought by outsiders, rather than a disease that needs medical care,” explained Onesphore Bangenza, a field worker with the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps, speaking from Bunia. “When people do not trust the health system, they often go first to traditional healers, faith leaders, or people they already know. The danger is that many only reach the hospital when they are already very sick.”

Local cultural dynamics add extra layers of risk. Many communities adhere to traditional burial customs that require close physical contact with deceased loved ones, a practice that has consistently driven Ebola transmission throughout past outbreaks. Faith leaders, who often hold more social trust than outside medical workers, are expected to lay hands on the sick to pray for healing, turning religious gatherings into potential super-spreading events. To date, the outbreak’s victim list includes frontline health workers lacking proper personal protective equipment, as well as pastors and worshippers who gathered for prayer services amid active transmission.

The Bundibugyo strain has a long history of being misunderstood. The first recorded outbreak of this variant occurred in 2007 in Uganda’s Bundibugyo District, the namesake mountainous farming region home to roughly 200,000 people. That outbreak killed 36 people and left lasting community trauma, with many residents still frustrated that the rare strain bears their home district’s name. Even in that initial outbreak, cultural misunderstanding drove many sick residents to traditional healers before seeking care. Samuel Kuule, the Ugandan nurse whose blood sample confirmed the 2007 outbreak, recalled that many early patients blamed witchcraft for their symptoms. Kuule himself experienced terrifying symptoms including peeling skin, bloodshot eyes, and severe headache, but never turned from modern care, even as others around him sought spiritual solutions. “For those who are weak in faith, they may (think) that they are being bewitched. Maybe they can believe it,” he said.

Local traditional healers themselves acknowledge that many residents turn to spiritual and herbal remedies only after modern medicine fails to deliver quick results. “For us in African traditional societies, in most cases when you fall sick and you go to the hospitals and they give you some injections and there is no improvement, there and then you switch to your neighbor, or anybody, and say maybe he is the one bewitching you. Then you decide to go to the witch doctor,” said Amon Balinda, speaking for a veteran traditional healer from the 2007 outbreak region.

Public health experts emphasize that Ebola begins when the virus spills over from an infected wild animal — most commonly fruit bats — into human populations, usually through the handling or consumption of bushmeat. It spreads exclusively through close contact with the bodily fluids of infected people or corpses, making early testing, isolation, and contact tracing the most effective tools to slow spread. Even so, deep-seated beliefs continue to hinder these efforts.

Humanitarian groups have begun adapting their approach, working to enlist religious and traditional leaders as partners in public health outreach rather than sidelining them. A viral video shared widely across Ituri recently featured Deogratias Kasereka, a catechist who recovered from Ebola after finally seeking care in Mongbwalu, a high-transmission area. Kasereka admitted he nearly died after putting off hospital care to tend to his fields, crediting his children with convincing him to seek medical treatment.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni recently echoed public health warnings in a televised address, rebuking faith leaders who continue to physically touch sick believers during prayer. “The pastors, the pastors, the pastors. The people of God — they are the ones who touch patients. … God is not deaf. You can pray without touching,” Museveni said, noting that WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had informed him that a large share of Congo’s current victims are religious people engaging in high-risk prayer practices.

As response teams work to contain the outbreak in a remote region already destabilized by rebel violence and mass displacement, the core challenge remains changing community attitudes to encourage early care-seeking and disrupt unsafe cultural practices that fuel transmission.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where healthcare teams have grappled for months with a persistent and deadly Ebola outbreak, a moment of joy has broken through the grim reality of crisis response. When a patient recently pulled through an infection that kills more than half of those it infects, local medical workers marked the rare win with spontaneous song and dance, a celebration that has underscored how survivor stories are reshaping morale on the front lines.

For weeks, overstretched medical teams have worked around the clock to contain transmission chains, trace contacts, and deliver life-saving care in communities that have been devastated by repeated Ebola outbreaks. Limited resources, challenging terrain, and widespread community fear have made the response an uphill battle, leaving many workers grappling with burnout and emotional fatigue.

But survivors are emerging as unexpected beacons of hope for these exhausted teams. Each person who walks out of treatment units alive offers tangible proof that care works, breaking through the sense of hopelessness that can settle over outbreak zones. Their recoveries not only boost the morale of frontline medics but also help build trust in local communities, encouraging more people to seek treatment early when survival odds are highest.

This latest celebration of recovery highlights the human side of a public health crisis that is often only covered in statistics of new cases and deaths. For the medics who have witnessed so much loss, a single recovery is more than a medical win—it is a reminder of why they continue their work, even in the most difficult circumstances.

Against a backdrop of widespread loss and death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ituri province, moments of joy have broken through at local Ebola treatment facilities — moments that could turn the tide in the fight against the unfolding outbreak.

On a Friday just after noon, a dozen frontline healthcare workers in green scrubs formed two lines along the marked exit path of Mongbwalu’s Ebola treatment center, singing hymns of gratitude as they escorted 49-year-old Daniel Kitambala out of the facility. Two consecutive negative diagnostic tests confirmed he had cleared the rare Bundibugyo Ebola strain after three weeks of care, bringing the subsistence farmer his long-awaited discharge.

“That disease is terrible. I was feeling very ill when I came here. But God is great, I am well now,” Kitambala told the BBC, beaming with relief as he carried a bag of his sterilized personal items. Raising his hands three times in a victory salute, he urged community members to seek prompt care if they develop Ebola symptoms, echoing a message that has slowly started to shift local skepticism of treatment facilities.

Ituri province was declared the epicenter of the new Ebola outbreak just over a month ago, but health officials now confirm the virus has likely spread undetected in the region for months. To date, more than 140 confirmed deaths have been recorded from the Bundibugyo strain, which kills roughly one in five people it infects. Five frontline health workers have already died from the virus, with several more still undergoing treatment, though updated infection prevention protocols and personal protective equipment have lowered risk for care teams since the outbreak was formally declared. A new on-site laboratory installed at Mongbwalu’s hospital two weeks ago also cut wait times for test results from more than a week to just 24 hours, speeding up care and contact tracing.

For months, dangerous misinformation and local myths have undermined response efforts. The most widespread belief, dubbed the “coffin curse,” blames a series of early deaths on the burning of a broken coffin that carried a deceased person from the provincial capital Bunia for burial in Mongbwalu, rather than the virus itself. Long before the outbreak was confirmed, false rumors that treatment centers spread disease circulated through communities. In May, attackers set fire to an Ebola treatment tent at Mongbwalu hospital, and a treatment center in the second outbreak epicenter of Rwampara was burned two days later, mirroring attacks on care facilities during the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in neighboring North Kivu.

But a string of recent recoveries has begun to turn public opinion. Deogratias Kasereka, a 55-year-old pastor, became the first patient to be discharged from the Mongbwalu center a week before Kitambala, and his safe return home has already driven more community members to seek care voluntarily.

“We have seen a huge difference in the community since the first patient recovered and returned home. More people are coming here now seeking treatment,” said Dr. Richard Lukodu, medical director of Mongbwalu hospital. Lukodu added that he remains optimistic that these success stories will help rebuild trust in local healthcare, a critical shift after years of violence fueled by misinformation around Ebola response.

Mongbwalu mayor Sesereki Mandro Israel confirmed that the situation is gradually improving, after early misdiagnosis slowed response — initial tests targeted more common Ebola strains, not Bundibugyo, delaying confirmation of the outbreak. Community leaders have since been mobilized to educate residents on Ebola symptoms and direct suspected cases to treatment centers.

In Rwampara’s reopened treatment center, where strict safety protocols separate patients from visitors via glass barriers, 2-meter gaps, and isolated cubicles for severe cases, Mireille Gahindo is already looking ahead to her discharge. Both Gahindo and her 11-month-old child tested positive for Ebola after the infant developed a fever that failed to respond to initial local care, and both are now recovering. “I feel very happy. I’m looking forward to going back home,” she said, eager to reunite with her two other young children and her husband.

For many local families, the pain of the outbreak has already been profound. Eli Asimwe Bawere, who came to the Rwampara center to visit his sister, brother, and stepmother, told the BBC he had already lost his mother and sister-in-law to the virus. “We have mourned a lot. We don’t want to mourn any more,” he said.

Every patient recovery brings a small, vital wave of hope to a region grappling with widespread death, but health officials warn major gaps remain in the response. To fully stop transmission, every contact of a confirmed Ebola case must be traced and monitored — officials confirm many exposed people are still missing, meaning the fragile optimism of recent weeks could quickly fade if the virus continues to spread undetected.

One month after the Democratic Republic of Congo formally declared an Ebola outbreak, the country is grappling with an unprecedented single-day spike in infections, as long-running systemic issues including insecurity, inadequate contact tracing, and critical funding shortfalls continue to derail containment efforts, Congolese health authorities have confirmed. In an update released Sunday, the Congolese Ministry of Health announced 72 new confirmed cases and 32 new confirmed deaths recorded over a 24-hour period. That surge pushes the total number of confirmed infections nationwide to 782, with the overall death toll now standing at 181. To date, 56 patients have successfully recovered from the virus, putting the current outbreak’s fatality rate at 23 percent.

Unlike the majority of past Ebola outbreaks in Congo, which were driven by the better-studied Zaire virus, this current event is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain — a variant for which no approved vaccine or targeted treatment currently exists. Public health experts warn the true scale of the outbreak is almost certainly larger than official counts indicate. The virus was not formally confirmed until May 15, weeks after epidemiologists suspect community transmission first began, and contact tracing coverage has dropped sharply to just 56 percent, down from levels reported just one week prior.

Over 90 percent of all confirmed cases are concentrated in the country’s eastern Ituri Province, where long-running armed conflict has displaced nearly one million people according to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This mass displacement creates massive barriers to effective contact tracing: displaced populations often flee violent attacks or move frequently across the province, which is defined by dense rainforest, poorly maintained road infrastructure, and remote rural communities that can take multiple days to reach. Additional challenges come from the region’s large population of artisanal miners, who regularly travel between isolated mining sites across the mineral-rich area, making it nearly impossible to track and monitor potential exposures. While the outbreak is centered in Ituri, a small number of cases have also been recorded in neighboring North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, and transmission has already spilled across the international border into Uganda.

International and continental health bodies have moved to ramp up their response efforts in recent days. The World Health Organization announced Sunday it is expanding its work on testing, contact tracing, and patient care across affected regions. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) also announced it is deploying specialized technical teams to support local outbreak management, with a focus on strengthening laboratory capacity, accelerating active case searching, and improving community engagement to boost public compliance with containment measures. “We remain committed to supporting affected countries until transmission is stopped,” said Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa CDC. “We call on partners and donors to urgently mobilize resources to strengthen the response and save lives.” The appeal for emergency funding comes as authorities acknowledge ongoing funding gaps have left the response severely underresourced a full month into the public health emergency.

In a Sunday evening update posted to social platform X, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ministry of Health has announced a sharp upward climb in confirmed cases of a rare Ebola outbreak, pushing the total to 782 documented infections and 181 confirmed deaths across the country. While these are the official numbers, public health officials warn the true scale of the epidemic is far larger than recorded. The outbreak was only formally detected on May 15, weeks after the first suspected infections emerged, and critical contact tracing efforts — a core strategy to halt Ebola spread — have dropped to just 56% coverage, a significant decline from rates reported the previous week.

This latest outbreak differs from most previous Ebola events in Congo in a key way: it is driven by the little-seen Bundibugyo virus, rather than the Zaire strain that caused the nation’s 16 prior outbreaks. Unlike Zaire, Bundibugyo has no globally approved vaccine or targeted treatment available to frontline health teams, limiting intervention options. As of the latest update, 56 infected patients have recovered, putting the current official fatality rate at 23% for the outbreak.

Nearly all confirmed cases — over 90% — are concentrated in eastern Congo’s volatile Ituri Province, with smaller clusters also detected in the neighboring North Kivu and South Kivu provinces. The virus has already crossed international boundaries, with cases confirmed in neighboring Uganda, raising regional public health alarm.

A web of long-standing crises has created major barriers to containing the spread, according to United Nations humanitarian officials. Ituri Province already hosts nearly one million people displaced by ongoing armed conflict, and constant population movement as communities flee violence makes tracking transmission chains nearly impossible. The province’s geography adds further obstacles: vast stretches of dense forest, poorly maintained road networks, and remote rural communities that can take multiple days to reach slow response teams.

Additional challenges come from the region’s large population of artisanal miners, thousands of whom move regularly between remote mineral extraction sites across the area, creating constant unmonitored movement that facilitates virus spread. Compounding these issues, attacks on frontline health workers by angry local residents, widespread misinformation and community skepticism about public health measures, and ongoing active armed conflict in transmission hotspots have all derailed containment efforts.

The outbreak has already sparked controversy beyond Congo’s borders. Last month, U.S. officials announced plans to construct a dedicated Ebola quarantine facility at Kenya’s Laikipia Air Base, with capacity for 50 beds, to treat Americans exposed to the virus in the region rather than repatriating them to the United States for care. The proposal sparked large public protests across Kenya, and the plan was ultimately halted by a court order.