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The World Health Organization declared on May 15, 2026 that an Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, a move intended to spur faster action across countries and donor agencies. The WHO said the situation does not meet the criteria for a pandemic emergency such as COVID-19 and advised against closing international borders.
Africa’s top disease-control body, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, first confirmed the outbreak in Congo’s Ituri province on Friday and said that by Saturday it had reported 336 suspected cases and 88 deaths. The Africa CDC said the cases are in Congo except for two recorded in neighboring Uganda.
Health authorities said the outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of Ebola for which there are no approved therapeutics or vaccines, a factor that officials said could make it harder to control compared with earlier Ebola outbreaks that involved other strains. The AP report also noted that although more than 20 Ebola outbreaks have occurred in Congo and Uganda—including 17 in Congo since Ebola first emerged in the country in 1976—this marked only the third time the Bundibugyo virus had been reported.
The WHO’s emergency declaration is aimed at accelerating international response efforts, including mobilizing resources and improving coordination, but past emergency declarations have not always produced rapid access to key supplies. In 2024, when the WHO declared mpox outbreaks in Congo and elsewhere in Africa a global emergency, experts said it did little to get diagnostic tests, medicines and vaccines to affected countries quickly.
The outbreak began in a remote area of Ituri, according to the Africa CDC, with first cases reported in the Mongwalu health zone, described as a high-traffic mining area in eastern Congo. The Africa CDC said cases later migrated to Rwampara and Bunia health zones as patients sought medical care, describing spread across three health zones and identifying Bunia as the province’s capital city.
Ituri’s geography and security challenges add difficulty to containment efforts, the Africa CDC said. Ituri is described as remote within eastern Congo with poor road networks and about more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Kinshasa, while Bunia’s proximity to Uganda raises concern about cross-border spread. The Africa CDC also pointed to risk of further spread driven by intense population movement and attacks by armed groups in parts of Ituri over the past year that have killed dozens and displaced thousands. The agency cited additional gaps in contact tracing as local authorities race to identify people who may have been exposed.
Officials described Bundibugyo as an “unusual strain” for Congo’s current Ebola history. The AP report said the Bundibugyo virus differs from the Ebola Zaire strain that has been dominant in most of Congo’s past Ebola outbreaks, and that health authorities have previously detected Bundibugyo during outbreaks in Uganda’s Bundibugyo district during 2007-2008, when it killed 37 people out of 149 cases, and in Congo’s Isiro in 2012, when 57 cases and 29 deaths were reported.
The Africa CDC said that once the outbreak was confirmed on Friday, it convened an urgent high-level coordination meeting with health authorities from Congo, Uganda and South Sudan, along with U.N. agencies and other countries. The meeting focused on immediate response priorities such as cross-border coordination, surveillance, safe and dignified burials and resource mobilization.
On Saturday, Africa CDC Director-General Dr. Jean Kaseya said several response measures had been set in place, including mobilization of resources from partners, deployment of multidisciplinary teams at official and nonofficial border crossing points, isolation of high-risk contacts, enhancement of surveillance, and contact listing and follow-up. The AP report also said Congo’s logistical constraints—including bad roads and long distances—have historically complicated outbreak responses.
The AP report said WHO released $500,000 on Friday to support the Ebola outbreak response, while Africa CDC said it had mobilized $2 million by Saturday—described as only a small fraction of urgently needed funding. It also pointed to earlier delivery challenges faced by WHO during last year’s three-month outbreak, when vaccine delivery took a week after confirmation, as well as funding concerns during that outbreak that health officials associated with U.S. funding cuts.
For context on the disease itself, health authorities said Ebola is highly contagious and can spread from wild animals to people, and then among humans through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, as well as with surfaces and materials contaminated with those fluids. The AP report said symptoms can include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and, in some cases, internal and external bleeding, and noted that the virus was first discovered in 1976 near the Ebola River in what is now Congo.