The World Health Organization on Sunday declared the outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern, the agency’s highest‑level alarm, after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths were recorded across the two central‑African nations.
The rare Bundibugyo ebolavirus variant driving the outbreak has no approved vaccines or treatments, and the WHO’s declaration underscores the urgency of mobilizing international support.
The outbreak was first confirmed Friday, but the WHO’s decision followed a rapid accumulation of cases, including laboratory‑confirmed infections in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the epicenter in the eastern province of Ituri, and in Goma, the largest city in eastern Congo. Both patients had traveled from Ituri, health officials said, indicating a wider spread than previously understood.
“There are significant uncertainties about the actual number of infected people and the geographic spread related to this event at this time,” WHO Director‑General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. “There is limited understanding of the epidemiological links with known or suspected cases.”
The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, a strain that was first identified during a 2007‑2008 outbreak in Uganda that infected 149 people and killed 37, and reappeared in 2012 in Isiro, Congo, where it caused 57 cases and 29 deaths. This is only the third known outbreak of the variant, and currently there are no licensed vaccines or antiviral treatments for it.
Dr. Richard Kitenge, director of operations for the Congolese public health emergency center, acknowledged the risk but pointed to the country’s past experience with the Zaire ebolavirus. “We have managed enough epidemics in the country without treatment,” Kitenge told The Associated Press. “The Zaire virus, which we managed, also went without treatment during several epidemics, and not everyone died.”
The WHO’s emergency declaration is intended to spur donor nations and agencies into action. The WHO Regional Office for Africa said Sunday that a team of 35 experts from the WHO and the Congolese Ministry of Health had arrived in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, with seven tons of medical equipment and emergency supplies.
However, the global response to previous African emergencies has been uneven. When the WHO declared mpox outbreaks in Congo and other parts of Africa a global emergency in 2024, some experts noted that the declaration did little to ensure diagnostic tests, drugs, and vaccines swiftly reached the affected countries.
Compounding the challenge is a volatile conflict zone that has made contact tracing and containment exceptionally difficult. The eastern Congo is home to several armed groups, including forces backed by the Islamic State group, and the M23 rebel group, which is supported by Rwanda, captured Goma during a rapid offensive in early 2025. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced, and the constant movement of people for mining and across the porous Ugandan border has hampered response efforts.
“In the community there is still a high number of active cases, particularly in Mongwalu, where the first cases were reported, significantly complicating containment and contact tracing,” said Dr. Jean Kaseya, director‑general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Kaseya also revealed that the slow detection of the outbreak had given the virus time to spread. The earliest suspected victim, a 59‑year‑old man, developed symptoms on April 24 and died three days later. Health authorities were not alerted until May 5, by which time 50 deaths had been recorded.
The Africa CDC has documented 336 suspected cases and 87 deaths in Congo, along with two infections in Uganda—one of them a person who traveled from Congo and died in a Kampala hospital. The outbreak is concentrated in the eastern Congo, but confirmed cases in Kinshasa and Goma have raised fears of wider transmission.
A significant problem is the high proportion of positive test results among samples, which the WHO said “points to a potentially much larger outbreak than is currently being detected and reported, with a significant risk of local and regional spread.”
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers the risk to the American public to be low. The agency has 30 employees on the ground in Congo and is working to deploy additional staff. It issued a travel advisory Friday urging Americans visiting Congo to avoid people with fever, muscle pain, or a rash, and said it is “implementing appropriate measures to identify individuals with any symptoms at ports of entry,” according to Dr. Satish Pillai, who is leading the CDC’s outbreak response.
The international community now faces a test: to mount a fast, well‑supplied response to a deadly disease spreading in a region that long‑standing conflict and weak infrastructure have made unusually hard to reach.