The World Health Organization has confirmed the Ebola outbreak ravaging the Democratic Republic of Congo remains a global health emergency, with confirmed infections now surpassing 5,000.
Following an emergency meeting on Tuesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on the international community to help contain the outbreak, which has now killed more than 2,320 people.
“We must be frank: The epidemic is far from being under control,” Tedros told the meeting. “It had a big head start, and we are still playing catch-up.”
The crisis has reached grim milestones in rapid succession. This is the DRC’s seventeenth Ebola outbreak on record and is now its deadliest, having exceeded the 2,299 deaths recorded during the 2018–2020 outbreak.
It had already become the country’s largest by case count in late July, and UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher has described it as the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record, warning that “speed, scale, and solidarity” are needed “before this virus gets even further ahead of us.”
Tedros has separately warned that at its current pace, the outbreak is on track to eclipse the 2014–2016 West African epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people.
Part of what has made this outbreak especially difficult to contain is the virus strain involved. There is currently no approved vaccine or treatment for this strain, known as Bundibugyo, and the outbreak was declared on May 17 even though genetic sequencing later showed it had already been spreading since February.
Since then it has expanded from a single health zone in Ituri Province to 49 health zones across five provinces — Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uélé and Tshopo — with a crude case fatality ratio around 44%.
Response efforts have been further complicated by a lack of security and attacks on health facilities in eastern DRC, where dozens of armed groups operate, alongside significant foreign aid cuts and a lack of public trust that has undermined awareness campaigns.
There has been at least one glimmer of hope on the treatment front: the first volunteer to receive an experimental vaccine for this Ebola strain got the jab in the United Kingdom last month.
Meanwhile, the UN’s humanitarian aid office has allocated $54.5 million to accelerate the response in the DRC, help neighbouring countries such as South Sudan and the Central African Republic prepare, and build community trust in the public health response.
