The World Health Organization (WHO) on Sunday declared its second highest level of international alert in response to the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The outbreak is caused by a highly lethal variant for which there is no vaccine.
According to a statement shared on the social network X by WHO, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus concluded that the virus “constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), but does not meet the criteria for a pandemic emergency.” PHEIC has been the second highest alert level of the WHO since 2024, behind “emergency due to a pandemic.”
Ebola, which causes a highly contagious hemorrhagic fever, remains formidable despite recent vaccines and treatments, which are only effective against the Zaire strain originally responsible for the largest recorded epidemics.
Variant Bundibugyo
The province of Ituri in northeastern DRC is affected by the Bundibugyo variant of Ebola, for which there is no vaccine. As of May 16, WHO has confirmed eight cases in the laboratory and documented 246 suspected cases and 80 confirmed in the province, as well as another confirmed case in Kinshasa and one death in Kampala, Uganda, among travelers recently returned from Ituri.
The African Union health agency, Africa CDC, has reported 88 likely deaths from the virus out of 336 suspected cases, based on the latest figures released on Saturday. Due to the difficult accessibility of the epidemic zone, few samples have been tested in the laboratory and the reports are mostly based on suspected cases.
Ituri, a gold-rich region bordering Uganda and South Sudan, experiences intense population movements linked to mining activity. Access to certain areas, plagued by armed violence, is challenging due to security reasons.
“We have been seeing people dying for two weeks,” recounted Isaac Nyakulinda, a representative of the civil society of the city of Rwampara (Ituri), contacted by AFP by phone. “There is no place to isolate the sick. They are treated at home and their bodies are handled by family members,” he continued, expressing fear of the worst.
15,000 deaths in 50 years
The virus has caused more than 15,000 deaths in Africa over the past 50 years. During previous epidemic outbreaks, the mortality rate fluctuated between 25% and 90%, according to WHO.
“The Bundibugyo strain has no vaccine and no specific treatment,” emphasized Congolese health minister Samuel-Roger Kamba on Saturday, adding that “with this strain, the mortality rate is very high. It can go up to 50%.”
The Bundibugyo variant has only caused two epidemics worldwide to date, in Uganda in 2007 (42 deaths out of 131 confirmed cases) and in DRC in 2012 (13 deaths out of 38 confirmed cases).
“We do not have a vaccine, which means we are mainly relying on public health measures,” such as observing barrier gestures and limiting travel, summarized Jean Kaseya, head of Africa CDC on Saturday.
Transmission through fluids
According to health authorities, the first suspected case is a nurse who presented on April 24 at a medical facility in Bunia, the capital of Ituri, with symptoms of Ebola infection.
The DRC experienced an Ebola epidemic between August and December 2025, resulting in at least 34 deaths. The deadliest epidemic there claimed over 2,300 lives out of 3,500 cases between 2018 and 2020.
In total, this epidemic is the 17th in DRC since the disease was identified in 1976 in Zaire, the country’s former name. Other countries on the continent have been affected by the virus in recent years, including Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Human transmission of the virus occurs through body fluids or exposure to the blood of an infected person, whether alive or deceased. Infected individuals become contagious only after symptom onset, with an incubation period of up to 21 days.
This article was automatically generated. Sources: ATS / AFP.
