BUNIA, DR Congo – More than 3,000 people have died from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the country’s worst outbreak spreads faster than health workers can identify patients, trace their contacts and isolate new infections.
Government figures released on Wednesday recorded 6,186 confirmed cases and 3,007 deaths. Updated data covering the period up to September 1 raised the total to 6,250 confirmed infections and 3,039 deaths.
The figures mean that almost half of the people confirmed to have contracted the disease have died. At least 1,439 patients have recovered, while 869 remained in isolation and receiving treatment.
This is now the largest and deadliest Ebola outbreak in Congo’s history, surpassing the 2018–2020 epidemic in the country’s east. It is second only to the 2014–2016 West African outbreak, which infected more than 28,600 people and killed over 11,000 across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
What makes the latest crisis particularly alarming is its speed. Congo’s outbreak has been described as the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever recorded. It passed 1,000 confirmed cases within approximately 40 days and has continued expanding despite interventions by the Congolese government, the World Health Organisation and international aid agencies.
The outbreak was officially declared in Ituri province in May 2026, although health officials believe the virus may have been circulating undetected for several months. It has now reached 60 health zones across six provinces: Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Tshopo, Haut-Uélé and Bas-Uélé.
Ituri remains the epicentre, with more than 5,100 confirmed cases and over 2,300 deaths. North Kivu has recorded nearly 900 cases and more than 600 deaths, giving it an even higher fatality rate than the national average.
The epidemic is being driven by the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, a less commonly encountered form of the virus. Unlike the Zaire species responsible for several previous outbreaks in Congo, Bundibugyo Ebola currently has no approved vaccine or specific treatment.
Health authorities have begun giving Merck’s Ervebo vaccine to frontline workers in selected areas, including Kisangani. However, Ervebo was developed for the Zaire species, and it is not yet known whether it provides reliable protection against Bundibugyo Ebola in humans. Clinical trials are needed to determine whether the vaccine can help control the present outbreak.
That leaves doctors fighting an aggressive virus without the proven medical tools used during some earlier Ebola emergencies. Treatment largely depends on identifying patients early, isolating them, controlling their symptoms and preventing infected bodily fluids from reaching other people.
Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of an infected person, contaminated objects or the bodies of people who have died from the disease. It does not normally spread through the air like influenza. Patients generally become infectious after developing symptoms.
Those symptoms can begin with fever, severe tiredness, muscle pain, headache and a sore throat before progressing to vomiting, diarrhoea, organ failure and, in some cases, internal or external bleeding.
Early detection is therefore essential. Yet the response in eastern Congo is falling dangerously behind the virus.
The World Health Organisation estimates that about 60 per cent of recent Ebola deaths have occurred outside treatment centres. This means many patients are dying inside homes and communities before health workers identify them, increasing the danger of relatives, caregivers and people preparing bodies for burial becoming infected.
Only between 15 and 20 per cent of newly confirmed patients have reportedly come from lists of known contacts. Most infections are being discovered outside the transmission chains already under surveillance, suggesting that response teams do not know where many of the virus’s pathways are.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned: “Until every chain is found and broken, the epidemic will continue; and it will continue to pose a threat to DRC, its neighbours and the region as a whole.”
Congo’s health workers are not fighting the virus under normal conditions. The outbreak is concentrated in an eastern region already damaged by armed conflict, mass displacement, attacks on civilians and weak public infrastructure.
Approximately one million displaced people are living in Ituri alone. Many stay in overcrowded settlements with limited clean water, sanitation and access to healthcare. Mining communities are highly mobile, while traders, transport workers and displaced families regularly travel between towns and across provincial borders.
Some Ebola response teams have been attacked. Health workers have also staged strikes over unpaid salaries and difficult working conditions. Every interruption gives the virus more time to spread through communities that may already distrust government authorities and outside organisations.
Residents say ordinary life has been transformed by fear. Public transport drivers have reduced the number of passengers they carry, while some families are avoiding crowded places.
“The disease puts everyone at risk, and daily life has slowed to a crawl. We are afraid,” Bunia transport driver Papy Baraka said.
Schools have reopened in parts of the affected region, but many parents and teachers fear that preventive measures are inadequate. Their concern is understandable: classrooms can bring together children from different households, while many schools lack sufficient water, protective materials and trained health personnel.
Authorities face an impossible choice between protecting children from infection and preventing another major interruption to education. But reopening schools without reliable screening, sanitation and rapid reporting systems risks placing teachers, pupils and their families in greater danger.
The outbreak is also a threat beyond Congo. Travel and trade connect affected communities to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and other parts of the Great Lakes region. Informal border crossings make it difficult to screen everybody moving between countries.
Uganda recorded 20 cases linked to the outbreak but was able to complete 42 days without another confirmed infection, allowing the authorities to declare its outbreak over in August. That success demonstrates that Ebola can be contained when cases are detected, contacts are followed and communities cooperate.
Congolese authorities are now using anonymised mobile-phone information to understand how people travel between outbreak areas. The system can help response teams identify distant towns connected to infection hotspots and position health workers before cases appear.
The technology is useful, but it cannot replace clinics, laboratories, ambulances, protective clothing, paid health workers and public trust. A phone signal can show where people are travelling; it cannot treat an infected patient or persuade a frightened family to report a death.
Congo’s Ebola catastrophe is therefore more than a medical emergency. It is the result of a deadly virus colliding with conflict, displacement, poverty, fragile institutions and an international response that remains smaller and slower than the outbreak it is supposed to stop.
Africa has already experienced the consequences of allowing Ebola to move ahead of surveillance. The lesson from West Africa is clear: waiting until every neighbouring country feels threatened will cost far more money—and many more lives—than acting decisively now.
More than 3,000 deaths should not become another statistic the world briefly acknowledges before moving on. Congo requires trained personnel, reliable funding, faster laboratories, community-led education, safe burials and urgent support for the health workers standing between the virus and millions of vulnerable people.
