KINSHASA (The Thursday Times) — Africa’s top public health agency said on Sunday that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is still not under control, six months after it was declared. “If we don’t stop this outbreak now, it would be the worst Ebola outbreak that the world will have,” Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview.
Government data show more than 11,200 cases and 5,500 deaths since the outbreak was announced on 15 May. The Bundibugyo strain behind it kills about half of the people it infects. It is the second-largest and second-deadliest Ebola outbreak on record, behind only the 2014–2016 epidemic in West Africa, which infected more than 28,600 people and killed more than 11,000.
Cases outside contact lists
Kaseya said more than 80 percent of new cases are emerging outside contact lists, and over 65 percent of deaths are happening in the community rather than in health centres. Cases have now been reported in East, Central, and West Africa, which gives the outbreak the widest geographic spread of any Ebola outbreak on the continent. Eight of the DRC’s 26 provinces are affected. Delayed detection, conflict, and strained health services have helped the virus spread faster than in earlier outbreaks.
No vaccine or treatment has been developed specifically for the Bundibugyo strain. The World Health Organization approved clinical trials of two new vaccines earlier this month and expects results in early 2027.
Money and coordination
Kaseya called coordination between Kinshasa and donors “a collective failure”, saying only $1.3bn of the $2.9bn pledged has been released. “We are not pointing fingers,” he said, adding that Africa CDC is working with the government to avoid duplication and that the DRC is digitising the payroll for health workers who “hadn’t been paid for months”.
The WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, struck a more hopeful note, writing on X that transmission is slowing in several of the early epicentres and that trials are advancing rapidly. The WHO says at least 3,000 people have recovered and returned home. Last week, MSF said Ebola funding was not reaching the front line.
