WHO declares global health emergency over Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion de­clared the Ebo­la dis­ease out­break caused by a rare virus in Con­go and neigh­bor­ing Ugan­da a pub­lic health emer­gency of in­ter­na­tion­al con­cern on Sun­day, af­ter more than 300 sus­pect­ed cas­es and 88 deaths.

WHO said the out­break doesn’t meet the cri­te­ria of a pan­dem­ic emer­gency like COVID-19, and ad­vised against the clo­sure of in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders.

WHO said on X that a lab­o­ra­to­ry-con­firmed case has al­so been re­port­ed in Con­go’s cap­i­tal, Kin­shasa, which is about 1,000 kilo­me­ters (620 miles) from the out­break’s epi­cen­ter in the east­ern province of Ituri, sug­gest­ing a pos­si­ble wider spread. It said the pa­tient had vis­it­ed Ituri and that oth­er sus­pect­ed cas­es have al­so been re­port­ed in North Kivu province, which is one of Con­go’s most pop­u­lous and bor­ders Ituri.

On Sun­day, the rebel gov­ern­ment of Go­ma, east­ern Con­go’s largest city, said in a state­ment that the first con­firmed case of Ebo­la was de­tect­ed in the city. The in­fect­ed per­son trav­eled from Ituri province and was cur­rent­ly un­der iso­la­tion, the state­ment said. Go­ma was the site of a rapid rebel of­fen­sive in ear­ly 2025, and the con­flict be­tween the Con­golese armed forces and the Rwan­da-backed M23 rebel para­mil­i­tary group has dis­placed hun­dreds of thou­sands.

Ebo­la is high­ly con­ta­gious and can be con­tract­ed via bod­i­ly flu­ids such as vom­it, blood or se­men. The dis­ease it caus­es is rare, but se­vere and of­ten fa­tal.

WHO’s emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tion is meant to spur donor agen­cies and coun­tries in­to ac­tion. By WHO’s stan­dards, it shows the event is se­ri­ous, there is a risk of in­ter­na­tion­al spread and it re­quires a co­or­di­nat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al re­sponse.

In a sep­a­rate state­ment on X on Sun­day, the WHO Re­gion­al Of­fice for Africa said that a team of 35 ex­perts from the WHO and the Con­golese Min­istry of Health had ar­rived in Bunia, the cap­i­tal of Ituri province, along with 7 tons of emer­gency med­ical sup­plies and equip­ment.

The glob­al re­sponse to pre­vi­ous de­c­la­ra­tions has been mixed. In 2024, when WHO de­clared mpox out­breaks in Con­go and else­where in Africa a glob­al emer­gency, ex­perts at the time said that it did lit­tle to get sup­plies like di­ag­nos­tic tests, med­i­cines and vac­cines to af­fect­ed coun­tries quick­ly.

It’s hard to treat a vari­ant of Ebo­la

Health au­thor­i­ties say the cur­rent out­break, first con­firmed on Fri­day, is caused by the Bundibu­gyo virus, a rare vari­ant of the Ebo­la dis­ease that has no ap­proved ther­a­peu­tics or vac­cines. Al­though more than 20 Ebo­la out­breaks have tak­en place in Con­go and Ugan­da, this is on­ly the third time that the Bundibu­gyo virus has been de­tect­ed.

Con­go ac­counts for all ex­cept two of the cas­es, both of which were re­port­ed in Ugan­da, WHO said.

The Bundibu­gyo virus was first de­tect­ed in Ugan­da’s Bundibu­gyo dis­trict dur­ing a 2007-2008 out­break that in­fect­ed 149 peo­ple and killed 37. The sec­ond time was in 2012, in an out­break in Isiro, Con­go, where 57 cas­es and 29 deaths were re­port­ed.

Dr. Richard Kitenge, chief of op­er­a­tions at the Cen­tre des Opéra­tions d’Ur­gence de San­té Publique, part of Con­go’s Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Pub­lic Health, re­cent­ly ar­rived in Ituri. He said that while the risks may be high, Con­go has weath­ered pre­vi­ous out­breaks.

“We have man­aged enough epi­demics in the coun­try with­out treat­ment. The Zaire virus, which we man­aged, was al­so un­treat­ed in sev­er­al epi­demics, and not every­one died,” Kitenge told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

Con­flict and mi­gra­tion com­pli­cate ef­forts

Africa Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Dr. Jean Kaseya said Sat­ur­day that a high num­ber of ac­tive cas­es re­main in the com­mu­ni­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Mong­walu, where the first cas­es were re­port­ed, “sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pli­cat­ing con­tain­ment and con­tact trac­ing ef­forts.”

Vi­o­lent con­flict with mil­i­tants, some backed by the Is­lam­ic State group, as well as con­stant pop­u­la­tion move­ment be­cause of min­ing, both with­in Con­go and across the bor­der in Ugan­da, have al­so posed a ma­jor chal­lenge to re­sponse ef­forts.

Of­fi­cials first re­port­ed the spread of the dis­ease in Ituri province, close to Ugan­da and South Su­dan, on Fri­day. On Sat­ur­day, the Africa CDC re­port­ed 336 sus­pect­ed cas­es and 87 deaths in Con­go.

“There are sig­nif­i­cant un­cer­tain­ties to the true num­ber of in­fect­ed per­sons and ge­o­graph­ic spread as­so­ci­at­ed with this event at the present time. In ad­di­tion, there is lim­it­ed un­der­stand­ing of the epi­demi­o­log­i­cal links with known or sus­pect­ed cas­es,” WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus said.

The two cas­es in Ugan­da in­clude one per­son whom of­fi­cials said had trav­eled from Con­go and died at a hos­pi­tal in Ugan­da’s cap­i­tal, Kam­pala, and an­oth­er WHO said had al­so trav­eled from Con­go.

WHO said the high per­cent­age of pos­i­tive cas­es among sam­ples test­ed, the spread to Kam­pala and Ugan­da and the clus­ters of deaths across Ituri “all point to­ward a po­ten­tial­ly much larg­er out­break than what is cur­rent­ly be­ing de­tect­ed and re­port­ed, with sig­nif­i­cant lo­cal and re­gion­al risk of spread.”

Con­go out­break killed 50 be­fore it was de­tect­ed

Kaseya said that slow de­tec­tion de­layed the re­sponse and gave the virus time to spread.

“This out­break start­ed in April. So far, we don’t know the in­dex case. It means we don’t know how far is the mag­ni­tude of this out­break,” Kaseya said, us­ing a term for the first de­tectable case of an epi­dem­ic.

The ear­li­est known sus­pect­ed case, a 59-year-old man, de­vel­oped symp­toms on April 24 and died at a hos­pi­tal in Ituri on April 27.

By the time health au­thor­i­ties were first alert­ed to the out­break on so­cial me­dia on May 5, 50 deaths had al­ready been record­ed, the Africa CDC said.

WHO said at least four deaths have been re­port­ed among health­care work­ers who showed Ebo­la symp­toms.

Di­ag­nos­tics and vac­cines prob­lems

Shanelle Hall, prin­ci­pal ad­vis­er to the head of Africa CDC, told re­porters Sat­ur­day that there were four ther­a­peu­tics un­der con­sid­er­a­tion for the Bundibu­gyo virus, but no vac­cine was be­ing ac­tive­ly con­sid­ered.

A big­ger is­sue is that even ex­ist­ing vac­cines and ther­a­peu­tics for oth­er Ebo­la virus­es aren’t man­u­fac­tured in Africa. Africa’s strug­gle to get vac­cines from rich­er coun­tries dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic spurred dif­fer­ent ef­forts to ac­cel­er­ate its ca­pac­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture shots, but re­sources re­main scarce.

Kaseya said the de­mand for a vac­cine for a rare virus like Bundibu­gyo, which isn’t as dead­ly as the Ebo­la Zaire promi­nent in Con­go’s past out­breaks, has been the re­cur­ring is­sue in dis­cus­sions with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies over vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing,

“If we are se­ri­ous in this con­ti­nent, we need to man­u­fac­ture what we need,” he said. “We can­not every sin­gle day look for oth­ers to come to tell us what they are do­ing.”