Michael Gwarisa
Barely six months after the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) declared the end of its last Ebola outbreak in December 2025, another deadly outbreak has emerged, this time involving the rare Bundibugyo strain, raising fears of wider regional spread and exposing major weaknesses in outbreak preparedness across Africa.
The outbreak has now also been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization, the agency’s highest level of global health alert, after cases crossed into Uganda and concerns mounted over undetected chains of transmission.
The Bundibugyo Ebola virus was first identified in Uganda’s Bundibugyo District between 2007 and 2008, where 149 confirmed and probable cases, including 37 deaths, were recorded. A second major outbreak was later reported in the DRC in 2012 in Isiro, Orientale Province, resulting in 57 cases and 29 deaths.
By Saturday, health authorities had reported 336 suspected cases linked to the latest outbreak, with 88 deaths recorded, 87 in the DRC and one in Uganda.
Although Africa has previously managed to contain deadly haemorrhagic fevers including Ebola and Marburg, the latest outbreak has presented a different challenge. According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, there is currently no approved vaccine or treatment specifically targeting the Bundibugyo strain.
“For this specific strain, we don’t have vaccine, we don’t have medicine. It means we are mostly relying on public health measures,” Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya told journalists during a briefing over the weekend.
The outbreak is believed to have started around the third week of April 2026, but confirmation only came on 14 May, creating what health experts say was a dangerous four-week window for uncontrolled community transmission.
Health officials say the delayed detection significantly complicated containment efforts, especially in eastern DRC where insecurity and conflict continue to disrupt surveillance systems and access to affected communities.
Authorities are also yet to identify the index case in the DRC, a development experts say has made contact tracing particularly difficult and raised fears that hidden chains of transmission may still exist.
“In the DRC today, we are rating the Bundibugyo Ebola virus outbreak at Grade 3, which is very high because the risk is huge. The challenge we have is that we don’t know the index case for DRC,” said Dr Kaseya.
Africa CDC has also cited limited diagnostic capacity, shortages of personal protective equipment and high population mobility as additional factors complicating the response.
Meanwhile, Uganda has already confirmed imported cases linked to the outbreak in the DRC, underlining fears of regional spread.
One confirmed case involved a 59-year-old Congolese man who travelled to Kampala and sought treatment at a health facility on 11 May after developing symptoms consistent with viral haemorrhagic fever. He later died on 14 May and his body was repatriated to the DRC for burial.
Samples later tested positive for the Bundibugyo strain following investigations prompted by reports of a concurrent outbreak in the DRC.
However, health authorities from the DRC government, WHO and Africa CDC are still yet to identify the original source of the outbreak inside the DRC itself.
Despite the growing number of suspected infections and deaths, Dr Kaseya said the continental risk level remained moderate for now, although he warned that the situation could deteriorate rapidly if surveillance gaps persist.
In declaring the outbreak a PHEIC, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the event met the threshold of an extraordinary public health threat due to the increasing risk of international spread and the unusual challenges surrounding the outbreak.
“The event is extraordinary,” Tedros said in the WHO determination.
WHO said unusual clusters of community deaths had already been reported across several health zones in Ituri Province, while infections among healthcare workers had raised concerns over transmission inside health facilities and gaps in infection prevention and control measures.
“There are significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time,” WHO said.
The organisation warned that the true scale of the outbreak could be far larger than currently detected because of delayed surveillance, ongoing insecurity, population movement and weak healthcare systems in eastern DRC.
WHO further noted that unlike outbreaks caused by the Ebola Zaire strain, there are currently no approved Bundibugyo-specific vaccines or therapeutics available, making the outbreak significantly more difficult to contain.
The global health agency has since urged affected countries to strengthen surveillance systems, intensify contact tracing, improve infection prevention measures and accelerate research into vaccines and therapeutics targeting the Bundibugyo strain.
