Congo Ebola response strained a month after WHO declares int’l emergency
Thursday, 18 June 2026
NAIROBI/LONDON/DAKAR, June 17 (Reuters): Health workers battling an Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo lack the personnel to identify suspected cases, the ambulances to transport them and even the construction materials to build isolation wards, officials and aid workers told Reuters.
A month after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international emergency, the outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain has grown to more than 800 confirmed cases, with warnings mounting that it could become the worst on record — surpassing the 2014-16 West Africa epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people.
Health teams are so stretched that tens of thousands of contacts of those cases remain untraced, Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters, pointing to insecurity and the urban, mining-heavy setting of the outbreak as central obstacles.
"After four weeks we have an outbreak in an urban area where there is insecurity, where there is this mining and trade activity, and also where we are not reaching all the people who must be in the contact list," he said late on Tuesday.
"If we don't reach these people, we cannot say that we can win with this outbreak."
Even the identified cases, which may represent just a fraction of the total due to insufficient testing and data gaps, are not always isolated and cared for, he said.
"We have people who were admitted who decide to escape for many reasons. We have people who are positive who are not admitted. And we saw also a number of people who are admitted but we believe that they are not getting appropriate support," Kaseya added.
A WHO report showed roughly a third of the 241 alerts about new suspected cases in Ituri, the worst-hit province, were not being followed up as of June 14. Manel Rebordosa, Oxfam Ebola Response Coordinator in the city of Bunia, told Reuters a woman with symptoms including fever and bleeding at a Rwampara medical centre he visited this week had been left waiting for hours.