Overview
- The outbreak in northeastern DRC has grown into the country’s largest on record, with roughly 3,900 confirmed cases and about 1,800 deaths concentrated in Ituri and North Kivu.
- WHO Director-General Tedros warned that new cases have doubled in some hotspots and called for an urgent, massive scale-up of funding, treatment capacity, field teams and safe-burial operations.
- Front-line teams and MSF report severe surveillance gaps: many patients arrive outside contact lists and tracing in Ituri has reached only about 59 percent in some reports, leaving thousands of contacts with uneven follow-up.
- The epidemic is caused by the Bundibugyo strain for which there is no approved vaccine or standard therapy, so responders rely on supportive care and experimental trials while expanding isolation and treatment beds.
- Local health services are near collapse because of overlapping crises, staff shortages, logistics barriers and the coming rainy season, which could slow deliveries, hinder access and raise the risk of spread to new communities.