MARIE JEANNE SHOW/EPA
Around 750 cases and 177 suspected deaths from the Bundibugyo strain in the country. The epidemic is, in reality, “much more serious” and “violence and insecurity make the response difficult”. US citizen is hospitalized in Germany.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned this Friday that the risk of an epidemic of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRCongo) went from “high” to “very high”, the maximum alert levelwhile risks at a regional level remain unchanged.
“The Ebola epidemic in the DRC is spreading rapidly“, declared the director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at a press conference.
“Previously, the WHO had assessed the risk as being high at the national and regional level, and low at the global level. We are currently reviewing our risk assessment to classify it as very high at the national level, high at the regional level and low at the global level,” he added.
The epidemic spread in the province of North Kivu and neighboring South Kivu, divided in two by the front lines between Congolese forces and the armed group March 23 Movement (M23), allegedly supported by Rwanda, which has seized vast swaths of territory since its resurgence in 2021.
A part of North Kivu, including the capital Bukavu, fell to the M23 in February 2025. The health response has difficulty organizing itself and has given rise to scenes of chaos in Ituri province, the focus of the epidemicwhere WHO continues to send staff.
With few road connections and plagued by violence from armed groups, Ituri is one of the most troubled provinces in DRCongo, where around a million displaced people are crowded into camps. To date, “82 cases have been confirmed, including seven deaths” in DRCongo, said Tedros Ghebreyesus, stressing that the “epidemic” is, in reality, “much more serious”.
The WHO director-general also referred to approximately 750 suspected cases and 177 deaths suspicions in RDCongo, information that had already been announced this morning on its official account on the social network X.
“These numbers evolve as surveillance efforts and laboratory tests improve, but violence and insecurity make the response difficult,” he noted.
The situation in Uganda is, for now, “stable, with two confirmed cases and one death recorded”, said the official.
One North American who contracted Ebola in DRCongo, a country neighboring Angola, is currently hospitalized in Germany.
“We have become aware of the information released today regarding another North American citizen, considered a high risk contactwhich was transferred to the Czech Republic”, indicated Tedros Ghebreyesus.
The UN announced the availability of 60 million dollars (51.69 million euros) from its Central Emergency Response Fund to accelerate the response in DRCongo and the region.
The US committed $23 million (19.81 million euros) to bolster the response in DRCongo and Uganda, and said it would also fund the creation of up to 50 Ebola treatment clinics in those countries.
Ugandan authorities said they were not aware of any U.S. establishment of any treatment centers.
DRCongo is regularly affected by epidemics of Ebola, which is transmitted through direct contact with blood or other bodily fluids from infected people or infected animals and causes severe hemorrhagic fever, muscle pain, weakness, headache, throat irritation, fever, vomiting, diarrhea and internal bleeding.
The epidemic, declared on May 15, corresponds to a new strain of Ebola, for which There is no vaccine and the mortality rate varies between 30% and 50%according to the WHO.
Ebola causes a deadly hemorrhagic fever, but the virus, which has caused more than 15,000 deaths in Africa in the last 50 years, is less contagious than Covid-19 or measles.
In the absence of a vaccine and approved treatment against the strain Bundibugyo of the virus, responsible for the current epidemic, containment guidelines are essentially based on compliance with barrier measures and the rapid detection of cases.
