WHO declares global health emergency over Congo and Uganda Ebola outbreak

Monday 18 - 07:40

By: Dakir Madiha

WHO declares global health emergency over Congo and Uganda Ebola outbreak

The World Health Organization declared Sunday that the Ebola outbreak affecting the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, its highest global alert level, after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths were reported across the two countries.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued the declaration following consultations with both governments, warning that major uncertainties remain over the true scale of infections and the geographical spread of the virus. The agency said the outbreak could be significantly larger than currently detected and carries a serious risk of regional transmission.

The outbreak is centered in the remote Ituri province in northeastern Congo and involves the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, a rare variant for which no approved vaccine or treatment currently exists. Only two previous outbreaks linked to this strain have been recorded, one in western Uganda in 2007 and another in Congo in 2012. Existing vaccines and therapies, including the WHO-approved Ervebo vaccine, were designed for the more common Zaire strain and may provide only limited protection against Bundibugyo Ebola.

Laboratory testing conducted by Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research confirmed Ebola infection in 13 of 20 analyzed samples. Officials reported eight confirmed cases in Ituri, one in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, and two in Uganda’s capital Kampala. Four confirmed infections involved nurses, raising concerns about transmission inside healthcare facilities. A 59-year-old Congolese man who died in a Kampala hospital on May 14 became Uganda’s first confirmed case in the current outbreak.

The WHO stressed that the situation does not meet the criteria for a pandemic emergency and advised countries against closing borders or imposing travel bans. The agency warned that restrictive measures could encourage informal cross-border movement without medical oversight, increasing the risk of undetected spread. Confirmed patients and close contacts were advised not to travel internationally except for medical evacuation purposes.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention held an emergency coordination meeting on May 16 involving health authorities from Congo, Uganda, and South Sudan alongside international partners including UNICEF, the US CDC, and pharmaceutical companies. The WHO also released $500,000 in emergency funding to support response operations in Congo.

Health officials said the first known patient was a nurse who developed symptoms on April 24 and later died in a hospital in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province. By the time health authorities identified the outbreak through social media alerts on May 5, around 50 deaths had already occurred, according to Africa CDC data.

Shanelle Hall, senior adviser to the director of Africa CDC, said researchers are currently evaluating four potential therapeutic treatments for the Bundibugyo strain, though no vaccine candidate is under serious consideration at this stage. The outbreak marks Congo’s seventeenth Ebola epidemic since the virus was first identified there in 1976 and comes only five months after the country declared the end of its previous outbreak, which killed 43 people.