Ebola spreads rapidly in Congo's overcrowded displacement camps amid aid cuts

In the camps scattered across Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, four people died of Ebola in a single day this past month. The families were left to dig the graves themselves. The morgue workers had no capacity to help. By then, nineteen deaths had already been recorded in that one camp—far above the usual monthly toll of two.

More than a million Congolese displaced by years of militia violence now live in these camps, and the virus is moving through them with terrifying speed. The official count stands at 3,442 confirmed cases and 1,521 deaths, but the World Health Organization believes the true numbers are somewhere between two and four times higher. What makes this outbreak distinct is not just its scale but its velocity. The Bundibugyo strain of Ebola now spreading through eastern Congo is killing people five times faster than previous outbreaks did in the same timeframe. It has already become the second-deadliest Ebola epidemic ever recorded.

The camps themselves are incubators for the disease. At Kigonze, which houses 20,000 people, there are only a handful of communal water stations. At Tsere, just outside the provincial capital of Bunia, more than 6,400 residents share a single water tank. The latrines, built in 2023, have not been properly maintained and overflow with waste. Esther Mave, the president of Tsere camp, posed the central problem plainly: during an Ebola outbreak, people must wash their hands constantly to avoid infection. But there are no taps, no sinks, no soap. The severe shortage of water makes the most basic defense against the virus—sanitation—nearly impossible to practice.

This infrastructure collapse is not accidental. Funding for toilets and hand-washing stations in the DRC was cut by more than half between 2024 and 2025, according to United Nations data, a consequence of aid reductions under the Trump administration. The camps had already languished for years with minimal outside support. Now, as the virus spreads, residents watch new Ebola treatment centers rise across the street while their own conditions remain unchanged. Baudouin Unega, a 74-year-old resident of Tsere, watched aid workers arrive to investigate, then leave. "They tell us there is no more funding," he said. "Just to be patient."

At Kigonze, the camp president, Etienne Dz'Djo Ndrutsi, reported at least 55 deaths between early April and late June—more than twenty times the normal rate. At least four were confirmed Ebola cases, though many families refused testing, having lost faith in authorities after years of neglect. "We need more beds to put all the dead bodies," Ndrutsi said. "I'm afraid we will all die from Ebola here in this camp."

The displacement itself is a wound that will not close. Since December, renewed fighting between rival ethnic militias and armed groups has displaced another 361,000 people, bringing the total displaced in Ituri province to 1.3 million. These are people fleeing decades of violence over land, trade routes, gold, and timber. Children have been shot in crossfire. Others have picked up explosives and been killed. For them, Ebola is simply the latest catastrophe in a long chain of catastrophes.

On a recent afternoon, a woman named Espérance Raciu Ucwimungu, forty years old, died of Ebola-like symptoms in a one-room hut she shared with her sister Chantal Imani and her daughter Wivine Biwiga. Her death was recorded. Many others are not. More than 80 percent of new Ebola cases in eastern DRC are being detected outside known contact lists, according to WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The virus is moving through communities with no access to health facilities, spreading among people who have vanished down winding alleys, impossible to trace.

Yet life persists in the camps. Children chase each other through narrow passages. Markets trade in basic goods. Women wash clothes and braid hair in the shade. On the evening of recent funerals at Kigonze, an eighteen-year-old named Isaak Dieume raised a worn trumpet to his lips and played a gentle tune. Children gathered to listen. Women preparing meals looked on. For a moment, the metallic notes hung in the air—a small brightness against the weight of loss and fear that has settled over the camps like dust.