WHO Warns Ebola Fight in Eastern Congo Is Far From Over as North Kivu Cases Double
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on 16 September 2026 that efforts to end Ebola in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are "far from over." Transmission is speeding up again in North Kivu, even as it eases in other parts of the east. Al Jazeera
Weekly Ebola cases in North Kivu doubled over the past two weeks, from 100 to more than 200. After months in which Ituri province carried the heaviest burden, the center of pressure for response teams has shifted north. That rise weakens any claim of a steady national decline.
Tedros said officials were racing to control "many outbreaks in many places" in North Kivu. He said the affected area is so vast that it is hard to speak of a single epidemic. Road access is limited, populations are mobile, and chains of transmission are scattered rather than clustered in one city, like separate brush fires instead of one large blaze.
Transmission was declining in the worst-affected areas of Ituri, described as the epicentre of the outbreak. South Kivu province has reported no new Ebola cases since May. WHO cited those two trends as encouraging signs, but the resurgence in North Kivu has offset them.
The current outbreak is driven by the rare Bundibugyo virus strain, which has no known cure. More than 3,000 health care and front-line workers had been vaccinated with Merck's Ervebo vaccine, according to Meg Doherty, WHO director of science, research, evidence and quality for health. Ervebo is licensed, or formally approved, against Zaire ebolavirus, but its effectiveness against the Bundibugyo strain is not known. The vaccine and the virus do not match.
The scale is now among the largest recorded in Congo. More than 7,200 Ebola cases and more than 3,500 deaths have been reported across seven provinces since the DRC declared its 17th Ebola outbreak in May. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control reported on 14 September 2026 a total of 7,258 confirmed cases, including 3,510 deaths. ECDC That updates the WHO tally of 6,757 confirmed cases, including 3,267 deaths, as of 7 September. WHO
Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared the outbreak on 15 May 2026. ReliefWeb Early reporting captured only a fraction of infections. As of 27 May, WHO reported 125 confirmed cases including 17 deaths, alongside 906 suspected cases including 223 deaths. WHO had said Ebola had likely been circulating unseen for two months and that numbers would grow, with 139 suspected deaths reported as of 20 May. Reuters On 27 May, Tedros urged a ceasefire, a temporary halt to fighting, to allow containment amid conflict and mass displacement. Reuters The U.S. CDC said it is responding to Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in remote areas of the country. CDC
The broader context here is a response fighting on two mismatched fronts. In Ituri and South Kivu, intensive case finding, isolation of patients, and work with local communities appear able to push transmission down. In North Kivu, fragmentation is the problem. Multiple simultaneous hotspots require parallel teams, cold chains for vaccines and samples, laboratories, and safe burial capacity across long distances, often in insecure districts where health workers cannot move freely.
Looking at what this means for containment, the vaccine question looms largest. A vaccinated front-line cohort above 3,000 offers some job protection on paper, yet without proven effect against Bundibugyo virus, WHO cannot rely on ring vaccination, vaccinating the contacts of each case to break chains, as it did in Zaire ebolavirus outbreaks. That places greater weight on basic control measures, supportive care, and rapid testing, all harder to sustain across many outbreaks in many places.
For diplomats and donors, the ceasefire appeal from May still frames the constraint. Displacement mixes exposed and unexposed people and interrupts follow-up of contacts. Until access in North Kivu stabilises, national totals will stay volatile, with declines in one province masking growth in another. Tedros's warning reads less as pessimism than as a correction to any reading of the Ituri and South Kivu data as a turning point for the outbreak as a whole.
