标签： Africa

The World Health Organization has formally categorized the ongoing Ebola outbreak centered in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), though it stopped short of classifying the event as a pandemic, the organization’s director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced Wednesday.

As of the latest update, global health officials have confirmed 51 Ebola cases across DR Congo, with an additional two confirmed infections recorded in neighboring Uganda – both of which are linked to travelers who entered the country from the outbreak zone in DR Congo. In total, the WHO is tracking more than 600 suspected cases and 139 suspected deaths across the region, with Dr. Ghebreyesus confirming that official case counts are projected to climb in the coming weeks, due to inherent lags in laboratory testing and viral detection.

Genetic sequencing has identified the outbreak as caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, a variant that has not circulated widely for more than 10 years. Speaking to reporters at the WHO’s Geneva headquarters, Dr. Ghebreyesus noted that epidemiological tracing suggests the outbreak likely began circulating undetected for roughly two months before it was officially detected. The first documented case was a nurse who developed Ebola symptoms and died in late April in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province – the current epicenter of the outbreak. The nurse’s remains were later transported to Mongwalu, one of two hard-hit gold-mining communities where the majority of confirmed cases have been documented.

Confirmed cases in DR Congo are concentrated in two eastern provinces: Ituri, where four local administrative areas (Mongwalu, Bunia, Rwampara and Nyakunde) have reported transmissions, and North Kivu, where cases have been recorded in Butembo and Goma, eastern DR Congo’s largest urban center that is partially controlled by armed rebel groups. The two Ugandan confirmed cases, both detected in the capital Kampala, have direct travel history to the outbreak zone in DR Congo.

“We know the actual scale of the epidemic in DRC is much larger than the current confirmed case count,” Dr. Ghebreyesus told reporters. Following a Tuesday meeting of the WHO’s independent emergency committee, the global body reaffirmed its assessment that the outbreak carries high risk at national and regional levels, but remains low risk at the global stage, and does not qualify as a pandemic emergency.

This marks the 17th Ebola outbreak that DR Congo has responded to since the virus was first identified, but the Bundibugyo variant presents unique public health challenges. The strain has only caused two previous recorded outbreaks globally, with a historical mortality rate of roughly 33 percent among confirmed infected patients. Unlike the more common Zaire Ebola strain that DR Congo has repeatedly responded to, there is no widely approved vaccine or targeted antiviral treatment for Bundibugyo Ebola. Health officials note that experimental vaccines for the variant are still in development, though existing vaccines approved for the Zaire strain may offer some cross-protection for exposed individuals.

Compounding response efforts, the eastern region of DR Congo has been plagued by decades of armed conflict and political instability, which limits access for international response teams and makes contact tracing and patient care far more difficult to implement effectively.

BUNIA, Democratic Republic of the Congo — A growing Ebola outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and neighboring Uganda carries high transmission risks at national and regional levels, while the global threat remains low, the World Health Organization confirmed Wednesday.

The updated risk assessment comes as response teams race to contain an outbreak that has already claimed 134 suspected lives, and WHO’s DRC mission lead warned the epidemic could persist for at least two more months even as aid operations scale up.

The WHO previously designated the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), a status that demands a coordinated, global collective response to curb spread. On Tuesday, the agency already raised alarm over the outbreak’s alarming growth trajectory and rapid transmission pace.

Health experts and frontline aid workers note the outbreak has been marked by critical early setbacks: the rare Bundibugyo strain spread undetected for weeks after the first recorded fatality, as authorities initially tested for more common Ebola variants and returned negative results. Currently, no officially approved treatments or licensed vaccines exist specifically for the Bundibugyo strain, leaving response teams with limited targeted tools. Local residents already grappling with long-running instability report sharp price hikes for basic protective supplies, including face masks and disinfectants, as demand surges.

As of Wednesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed 51 confirmed cases across DRC’s conflict-affected Ituri and North Kivu provinces, plus two additional confirmed cases in Uganda. There are also nearly 600 additional suspected cases and deaths, and Tedros warned case counts will continue to climb in the coming weeks. “We know that the scale of the epidemic is much larger,” he stated, adding that upward revisions to case numbers are expected as surveillance expands.

Multiple structural challenges continue to hamper containment efforts. The first recorded death from the current outbreak was recorded in Bunia on April 24, but official confirmation of the strain took weeks. The victim’s body was repatriated to Mongbwalu, a populous gold-mining region that has since become the outbreak’s epicenter, a delay that DRC Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba confirmed directly fueled the epidemic’s escalation. To date, response teams have not yet identified the index case (patient zero) of the outbreak, WHO’s DRC lead Dr. Anne Ancia confirmed.

Beyond detection delays, large cross-border population movements in the region and a long-running pre-existing humanitarian crisis have complicated response work. Large swathes of eastern DRC remain controlled by armed rebel groups, blocking aid teams from accessing high-risk areas. Dr. Ancia added that recent funding cuts have also severely undermined the work of frontline humanitarian organizations, stretching already thin resources even thinner.

To address the lack of targeted vaccines, DRC’s national biomedical research institute expects imminent shipments of an experimental broad-spectrum Ebola vaccine developed by Oxford University researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom. “We will administer the vaccine and see who develops the disease,” explained Jean-Jacques Muyembe, leading virus expert at the institute, outlining the trial protocol for the unapproved product.

The United States has also committed additional support: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Tuesday that the Trump administration will prioritize funding for 50 new emergency clinics in affected regions, building on the $13 million Washington has already allocated to the response, with more funding to come.

On the ground in Bunia, where the first fatality was recorded, daily life has partially continued: schools and churches remained open Wednesday, though many residents now wear face masks in public. Still, supply shortages have sent prices skyrocketing: local residents report that a bottle of disinfectant that previously cost 2,500 Congolese francs now retails for as much as 10,000 francs ($4.4), and masks have become nearly impossible to source at any price. “It’s truly sad and painful because we’ve already been through a security crisis, and now Ebola is here too,” said Bunia resident Justin Ndasi. “We have to protect ourselves to avoid this epidemic.”

Frontline medical groups say local health infrastructure is already overwhelmed. Trish Newport, emergency program manager for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said her team identified multiple suspected cases over the weekend at Bunia’s Salama Hospital, which lacks any dedicated Ebola isolation ward. When they tried to transfer patients to other facilities, every available bed was already occupied. “Every health facility they called said, ‘We’re full of suspects cases. We don’t have any space.’ This gives you a vision of how crazy it is right now,” Newport said.

In Mongbwalu, the outbreak’s epicenter, the border with Uganda remains open and commercial gold mining operations continue, according to local civil society leader Chérubin Kuku Ndilawa. While widespread panic has not taken hold, with residents continuing daily routines, community awareness efforts are just starting to scale up. Ndilawa added that a lack of basic public health infrastructure, including handwashing stations in high-traffic public areas, continues to hinder containment work. At Mongbwalu General Hospital, former director Dr. Didier Pay reported the facility is currently caring for around 30 confirmed Ebola patients, and a local medical technology student died from the virus Wednesday morning.

AP writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Wilson McMakin in Dakar contributed reporting to this article. AP’s global health and development coverage in Africa is supported by funding from the Gates Foundation; the AP maintains full editorial control over all content.

A rapidly expanding Ebola outbreak in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has sparked widespread public fear, triggered an international public health emergency declaration, and left more than 130 people dead as response teams race to contain a virus that spread undetected for weeks.

As of Tuesday, official data counts 513 suspected cases across multiple provinces, with 136 confirmed fatalities in the DRC and one additional death recorded in neighboring Uganda. Cases have already spread beyond the Ituri province epicenter to reach major population centers including Butembo, Goma, and areas of South Kivu, raising alarm among public health authorities about the outbreak’s trajectory.

Local communities in the gold-mining hubs at the center of the outbreak have been gripped by anxiety since the first cases emerged. “Ebola has tortured us,” a 20-something taxi driver in Rwampara told reporters. “I am scared because people are dying very fast… We are really afraid.” Local resident Fred Kiza added that widespread fear is an unavoidable response to the crisis, noting that basic protective supplies like face masks remain scarce for at-risk communities.

Congolese Health Minister Dr Samuel Roger Kamba, who visited the Ituri outbreak epicenter over the weekend, acknowledged that response teams are already playing catch-up against a virus that may have begun circulating long before it was first formally detected on April 24. The presumed index patient, a nurse who died in the provincial capital of Bunia, was buried in Mongwalu, another gold-mining town that has recorded the majority of the outbreak’s suspected cases and deaths alongside neighboring Rwampara.

Official community reporting of unexplained deaths and illness only began on May 8, meaning many early fatalities went unrecorded and uninvestigated. “At community level, this hasn’t been effective,” Dr Kamba explained. “It means someone may have died before him [the presumed index case], or someone else may have been sick before him, but no one reported it. We really need to look within the community to understand what happened – how people became ill and sometimes even died without any report being filed.”

Complicating detection and response is the specific strain of Ebola causing this outbreak: the Bundibugyo variant, which is far less common in the DRC than the more widely known Zaïre strain. The DRC is currently facing its 17th Ebola outbreak, and local health systems were mostly prepared for the Zaïre variant. Before this current event, Bundibugyo had only caused two small outbreaks, in 2007 and 2012, and has a documented mortality rate of around 30 percent.

The Bundibugyo strain also presents more subtle symptoms than many people familiar with Ebola expect, leading to dangerous diagnostic delays. “There is heavy bleeding everywhere, very high fever. But Bundibugyo can show fewer obvious signs, which delays diagnosis because people think, ‘No, this is just malaria,’” Dr Kamba said. In some Mongwalu communities, early deaths were incorrectly attributed to witchcraft rather than a contagious virus, fueling a local belief called the “coffin phenomenon” that anyone who touches an infected person’s coffin will also die.

International aid group Save the Children confirmed that the Bundibugyo strain had never been detected in Ituri before this outbreak, and initial limited testing only screened for the Zaïre strain, returning false negative results. “By the time the Bundibugyo strain was detected, it had already spread quite far. We are in a game of catch-up,” said Greg Ramm, the organization’s DRC representative.

Five days after the outbreak was formally declared, none of the major affected urban centers—Bunia, Butembo, and Goma, each home to hundreds of thousands of residents—have a fully operational Ebola treatment center, leaving local residents frustrated with the slow pace of response. “If there’s no treatment centre here in the capital, then what about other areas?” one Bunia resident asked.

In Goma, eastern DRC’s largest city and a major regional trading hub, basic public health safety measures—including social distancing, limited gatherings, regular handwashing, and mask-wearing—are widely ignored. Many residents say daily survival takes priority over virus prevention rules, while low awareness contributes to low compliance. “It’s too much to ask people struggling to eat to follow these rules,” one local resident explained. Local journalist José Mutanava noted that he wears a mask for work, but barely any other residents in the city do.

The unstable security environment in eastern DRC adds another layer of complexity to response efforts. Four of the five affected administrative areas are in Ituri, while Goma in North Kivu is currently controlled by M23 rebel forces, and Butembo, North Kivu’s second-largest city, faces ongoing militia violence. Hundreds of thousands of people are already displaced in the region, and local healthcare systems were already severely stretched before the outbreak began.

“The Ebola outbreak is a new massive crisis on top of an already difficult situation,” Save the Children said in a statement.

The outbreak has already had international ripple effects: an American doctor working at Nyakunde Hospital in Ituri has tested positive for the virus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that one American has already been evacuated to Germany for treatment, and the agency is working to evacuate at least six other Americans who had close contact with infected patients.

The U.S. government has announced $13 million in emergency humanitarian assistance for the DRC and Uganda, and is considering additional funding through the United Nations’ pooled humanitarian fund, alongside implementing targeted travel restrictions linked to the outbreak. On May 15, after confirmed community spread was documented, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the highest level of global public health alert.

For now, Congolese authorities say they are drawing on decades of hard-earned experience responding to Ebola outbreaks, relying on tried-and-true public health measures to curb the spread of the 17th Ebola outbreak the country has faced.

An ongoing Ebola outbreak originating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has spread faster and wider than initial assessments projected, international health officials have warned, with cases already detected in neighboring Uganda and multiple provinces across the unstable Central African nation. As of Tuesday, official counts put suspected cases in the DRC at more than 513, with 131 recorded fatalities in the country and one additional death in Uganda. But new analysis from the London-based MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis suggests official numbers are likely far lower than the actual caseload, with researchers warning that substantial under-detection could mean the total number of infections has already surpassed 1,000. The true size of the outbreak remains uncertain, the study added, noting that current confirmed figures understate the outbreak’s real scale.

The World Health Organization (WHO) representative to the DRC, Dr. Anne Ancia, told the BBC that expanded on-the-ground investigations have confirmed the virus has reached multiple new regions, including the conflict-affected province of South Kivu and Goma, eastern DRC’s largest population center home to roughly 850,000 residents that is currently controlled by Rwandan-backed armed groups. The outbreak’s epicenter remains DRC’s Ituri province, a chronically insecure region marked by widespread forced population displacement that has severely complicated response efforts. “The more we are investigating this outbreak, the more we realise that it has already disseminated at least a little bit across border and also in other provinces,” Ancia explained. Chronic instability across multiple affected provinces pushes residents to move frequently, raising the risk of further transmission, she added.

The Red Cross echoed the WHO’s warning, noting that all the conditions that allow Ebola to escalate rapidly—delayed case identification, low community awareness, and strained health systems—are already present in the current outbreak. DRC President Félix Tshisekedi called for calm and urged citizens to maintain vigilance following an emergency crisis meeting on the outbreak Monday evening. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) last week, said he is deeply alarmed by both the size and acceleration of the epidemic.

Health investigators believe the outbreak had been circulating for several weeks before it was first officially detected on April 24. Complicating response efforts further, there is no approved vaccine for the specific viral strain driving the current outbreak: the rare Bundibugyo strain, which has only caused two recorded outbreaks previously, with roughly a third of infected patients dying from the disease. The WHO is currently evaluating whether existing antiviral treatments developed for other Ebola strains may offer some protection against Bundibugyo.

Neighboring and regional countries have already implemented emergency precautions to slow cross-border spread. Rwanda has closed its entire border with the DRC, while Uganda has advised citizens to avoid traditional greetings including hugs and handshakes, and multiple other African nations have tightened entry screenings and prepped health facilities to handle potential cases.

International fallout from the outbreak has already spread beyond Africa: an American citizen, identified as missionary doctor Peter Stafford, developed Ebola symptoms over the weekend and is being evacuated to Germany for treatment. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed it is also coordinating the evacuation of at least six other American citizens who had potential exposure to the virus.

WHO and partner humanitarian organizations are currently working alongside DRC government officials and local community leaders to contain transmission, urging residents to follow public health safety guidelines and seek immediate care at the nearest health facility if they develop any Ebola symptoms.

Ebola is a viral infectious disease that begins with flu-like symptoms including fever, headache, and fatigue. As the infection progresses, patients often develop vomiting and diarrhea, which can progress to organ failure; some patients also experience internal and external bleeding. The virus spreads through direct contact with infected bodily fluids such as blood or vomit. The 2014-2016 West African Ebola epidemic, caused by the Zaire strain for which an approved vaccine now exists, remains the largest outbreak of the virus since its discovery in 1976, with more than 28,600 confirmed infections and 11,325 recorded deaths across multiple countries including Guinea, Sierra Leone, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy.