The Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has become the deadliest in the country’s history, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) warning that it is in “a phase of intense transmission”.
The DRC National Institute of Public Health on Sunday confirmed that total fatalities from the outbreak, which started about six months ago, stood at 2,325. That is still far short of the epidemic from 2014 to 2016 in west Africa, which killed 11,310 people.
The number of reported cases and deaths hit a record during the most recent reporting week, according to the WHO. “The broader geographic spread and continued high mortality demonstrate the rapidly changing scope of this public health emergency,” it said. The confirmed number of Ebola infections reached 4,945 on Sunday, including 101 new cases in the previous 24 hours, according to DRC health authorities.
The true number of infections could be much higher. London health analytics company Airfinity estimates infections during this outbreak to be five times above the officially reported figures.
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“The 2014-16 west Africa outbreak remains the only meaningful comparator for where this could go if the trajectory is not reversed within weeks,” Airfinity said on Monday.
The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which was first identified in the Bundibugyo district of Uganda in 2007 and then caused an outbreak in DRC with several hundred cases in 2012. It is believed to originate in fruit bats and is then transmitted between people through direct contact with blood and other body fluids.
Attempts by the WHO, MSF and other medical agencies to contain the present outbreak have so far been thwarted by armed conflict and extensive population displacement, as well as the DRC’s fragile healthcare infrastructure.
In contrast, in Uganda, where the same virus infected 20 people earlier this year and killed two, no new cases have been reported for more than a month.
Speaking last week after a visit to DRC, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “The outbreak had a big head start, it is still way ahead of us, and we are playing catch-up.
[ ‘We will all die from Ebola here’: Virus stalks crowded camps in CongoOpens in new window ]
“There are chains of transmission we don’t know about, and until we know about – and break – every chain of transmission, we will not stop the outbreak.”
Manenji Mangundu, Oxfam’s country director in DR Congo, said the collapse of sanitation and hygiene infrastructure was making it harder to contain the crisis, which had been deepened by conflict and aid cuts.
“Most deaths continue to occur within communities, which shows that too many cases still go undetected,” he said. “This is a disaster unfolding right before our eyes, and it is the result of political choices. We urgently need proper funding to be restored.”
The first two vaccines designed specifically to protect against Bundibugyo virus recently started phase 1 safety trials in human volunteers. Both are based on technology used first to develop Covid-19 vaccines.
One candidate was developed by Moderna, the US-based mRNA company. The other candidate comes from the University of Oxford. The Serum Institute of India (SII) has already manufactured 620,000 doses of the Oxford vaccine candidate for potential future use.
In addition, the WHO plans to start a trial of an existing vaccine made by the US company Merck to prevent the Zaire strain of Ebola in order to assess its effectiveness against Bundibugyo.
Although none of these vaccines can be deployed in the immediate future, an effective one would make a big difference, said Jean-Nicolas Armstrong Dangelser, a veteran of MSF campaigns against Ebola. In the 2018-2020 outbreak “being able to deploy vaccination campaigns and strategies changed the dynamic of our response”, he said. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
