WHO declares rare Ebola outbreak in DRC and Uganda a global health emergency

On a Sunday in May, the World Health Organization made a declaration that sent ripples of alarm through Africa and beyond: a rare strain of Ebola had emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, and it warranted the organization's second-highest level of alert. The Bundibugyo strain, one of three known variants capable of causing Ebola virus disease, had killed more than eighty people in suspected cases across the eastern DRC province of Ituri and had already crossed into Uganda's capital, Kampala. The WHO stopped short of calling it a pandemic—the virus did not meet those criteria—but the agency made clear that neighboring countries sharing land borders with the DRC faced significant risk of further spread.

The outbreak had been quietly building for weeks before it surfaced in public consciousness. Médecins Sans Frontières received its first alerts in late April about an unusual spike in deaths from what appeared to be a hemorrhagic fever in the northwest of Bunia, the provincial capital. By the time the Africa CDC announced the outbreak publicly on a Friday, at least fifty-five people had died since early April. The numbers climbed quickly: by Saturday, the WHO reported eighty suspected deaths, eight laboratory-confirmed cases, and two hundred forty-six suspected cases concentrated in Ituri. Two cases, including one death, had already been documented in Kampala among people who had traveled from the DRC. A third confirmed case emerged in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, a city held by the M23 rebel group since the previous year.

What made this outbreak particularly terrifying was what the virus lacked. The Bundibugyo strain has no approved vaccine. It has no specific treatment. The mortality rate ranges between twenty-five and forty percent—a death sentence in places where intensive care units do not exist and families cannot afford to isolate the sick. The DRC's dense tropical forests serve as a natural reservoir for Ebola, and the virus spreads through bodily fluids: blood, vomit, the sweat of the dying. People become contagious only after symptoms appear, but the incubation period can stretch to twenty-one days, meaning infected travelers can cross borders before anyone knows they carry the disease.

The conditions on the ground made containment nearly impossible. Ituri province is home to the Allied Democratic Forces, a brutal militia linked to ISIS, whose violence has destabilized the region for years. The insecurity restricts movement and complicates surveillance. Health centers are often informal, unregistered, and beyond the reach of official monitoring. The province sits at a crossroads—a commercial and migration hub with Uganda and South Sudan nearby. When Isaac Nyakulinda, a civil society representative in the city of Rwampara, spoke to journalists, his words carried the weight of helplessness: for two weeks he had watched people die. There was nowhere to isolate them. They died in their homes, and their families handled their bodies, unknowingly spreading the virus further.

Dr. Jean Kaseya, the director general of the Africa CDC, did not mince words. "I am in panic," he told Sky News, "because people are dying. I have no medicines. I have no vaccine to support the countries." He had been scheduled to remain in Geneva for the World Health Assembly meetings, but he announced he would return to Africa on Monday to help coordinate the response. The outbreak, he said, exposed a fundamental inequity: African nations lack the capacity to produce their own vaccines and treatments. Western countries did not understand, he warned, that when Africa was affected, they too were at risk—people flew on airplanes every day.

The WHO deployed nearly seven tons of medical supplies and emergency equipment to Bunia, along with thirty-five experts from the UN health agency and the Congolese Ministry of Health. The organization issued strict guidance: confirmed cases and contacts must not travel internationally except for medical evacuation. National travel should be restricted. Daily monitoring of contacts was essential. Yet the agency also urged countries not to panic and close their borders—doing so would only push people and goods into informal, unmonitored crossings, accelerating spread rather than stopping it. Rwanda, however, took a different approach. On Sunday, the mayor of the border municipality of Rubavu ordered the indefinite closure of one of the busiest crossing points between Rwanda and the DRC, allowing only Rwandan nationals to pass after medical screening and reinforcing surveillance on illegal border routes.

The real uncertainty lay in the numbers themselves. The WHO acknowledged that the true scale of infection remained unknown. The high positivity rate of initial samples and the confirmation of cases in both Kampala and Kinshasa suggested the outbreak was far larger than what was being detected and reported. This was the third known outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain—Uganda had experienced one in 2007 and 2008, and the DRC in 2012. But nothing in those precedents had prepared the region for what was unfolding now. Dr. Samuel-Roger Kamba, the DRC's health minister, stated plainly what everyone understood: the Bundibugyo strain has no vaccine and no specific treatment. The Africa CDC was in talks with companies developing experimental tests, vaccines, and therapies in early stages, hoping some might be available within weeks. But weeks could mean thousands more deaths in a region where the virus had already begun to move.