The World Health Organization’s director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has issued a stark warning that persistent armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is severely undermining global and local efforts to curb an accelerating Ebola outbreak that has already claimed hundreds of suspected lives. With the epicenter of the current outbreak located in DR Congo’s violence-wracked Ituri Province, Tedros described the crisis as a “catastrophic collision of disease and conflict”, noting that the virus is spreading faster than response teams can contain it.
In a public post on the social platform X, Tedros emphasized that public health work cannot progress under active combat: “We cannot build community trust or isolate the sick while bombs are falling.” He confirmed that he will travel to DR Congo on Wednesday to lead efforts to scale up response capacity and slow the outbreak’s spread. As of the latest updates, 220 suspected Ebola-related deaths have been recorded since the outbreak was officially declared, with roughly 1,000 people currently exhibiting symptoms consistent with the viral disease. Only 17 of those deaths have been definitively confirmed via laboratory testing, leaving response teams working with incomplete data on the outbreak’s true scope.
The challenges facing medical teams extend far beyond active fighting. Ituri has been under direct military rule since 2021, when the central government replaced civilian leadership with a military commander in a bid to disarm dozens of active armed groups operating in the region. Chronic poor road infrastructure makes travel across affected areas slow and dangerous, while mass population displacement from conflict has fractured the already fragile local public health system — a strain worsened by recent cuts to international aid funding. Tedros stressed that halting Ebola transmission in the region is entirely dependent on unimpeded, sustained humanitarian access to affected communities. Ongoing clashes have forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, pushing many exposed to the virus into overcrowded displacement camps that create ideal conditions for further spread, while cutting off critical routes that medical teams rely on to reach patients. “Frontline workers are risking everything, while attacks on health facilities make tracking cases and their contacts nearly impossible,” he added. He has called on all armed parties and the Congolese government to agree to an immediate ceasefire to grant medical teams safe, unobstructed access to all affected areas.
Adding another layer of complexity to the response, this outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which no widely approved vaccines or targeted therapies currently exist. Response teams are currently working against the clock to trace more than 3,600 people who have been identified as close contacts of confirmed or suspected cases, a critical step to stop chains of transmission. While 2,000 testing kits have already been distributed to affected areas, a further 4,000 are scheduled for deployment in the coming days, and experimental treatments including an antibody developed in the United States are expected to be deployed soon.
The head of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in DR Congo, Ewald Stals, told the BBC that the organization and other aid groups are working to move critical supplies and personnel into the outbreak’s epicenter, but persistent insecurity and inadequate transport links in Ituri have slowed progress dramatically. “Slowly but surely, there is, of course, some activity going on, but overall, we’re still far behind having a control on the situation,” Stals said. “So we still do not have a full picture of what is happening, and that is mainly due to insufficient testing. So we need more testing, we need more diagnosis to make sure that we get a full picture of what is going on — so we do not have that for the moment. And as long as that is the case, we can say that we’re running behind the virus, that the virus is still ahead of us, and that we really have to catch up.” MSF estimates it will take several weeks to put the full infrastructure needed to contain the outbreak in place.
A small number of cases have already been detected in neighboring Uganda, prompting growing global concern about cross-border spread. Multiple countries have already implemented strict travel restrictions in response to the outbreak: Last week, the United States banned entry for non-citizens who have recently traveled to DR Congo, Uganda, or South Sudan. Canada followed this week with a temporary 90-day entry ban on residents from the three affected countries, while the Bahamas has implemented mandatory quarantine or isolation for foreign nationals arriving from the region.
International health bodies have begun moving to boost their on-the-ground response capacity. On Wednesday morning, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) announced it would increase its in-country presence, deploying additional outbreak experts via the EU Health Task Force to support local and international response efforts. The WHO and partnering organizations have stressed that without an immediate end to hostilities in Ituri, the outbreak will continue to outpace response efforts and could spread beyond DR Congo’s borders.