The World Health Organization declared the Ebola disease outbreak brought on by a rare virus in Congo and neighboring Uganda a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday, after greater than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths.
The WHO said the outbreak doesn’t meet the factors of a pandemic emergency like COVID-19, and advised against the closure of international borders.
The WHO said on X that a laboratory-confirmed case has also been reported in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, which is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the outbreak’s epicenter within the eastern province of Ituri, suggesting a possible wider spread. It said the patient had visited Ituri and that other suspected cases have also been reported in North Kivu province, which is considered one of Congo’s most populous and borders Ituri.
Ebola is extremely contagious and might be contracted via bodily fluids comparable to vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and sometimes fatal.
The WHO’s emergency declaration is supposed to spur donor agencies and countries into motion. By the WHO’s standards, it shows the event is serious, there may be a risk of international spread and it requires a coordinated international response.
The worldwide response to previous declarations has been mixed. In 2024, when the WHO declared mpox outbreaks in Congo and elsewhere in Africa a worldwide emergency, experts on the time said it did little to get supplies like diagnostic tests, medicines and vaccines to affected countries quickly.
It’s hard to treat a variant of Ebola
Health authorities say the present outbreak, first confirmed on Friday, is brought on by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of the Ebola disease that has no approved therapeutics or vaccines. Although greater than 20 Ebola outbreaks have taken place in Congo and Uganda, this is just the third time the Bundibugyo virus has been detected.
Congo accounts for all except two of the cases, each of which were reported in Uganda, the WHO said.
The Bundibugyo virus was first detected in Uganda’s Bundibugyo district during a 2007-2008 outbreak that infected 149 people and killed 37. The second time was in 2012, in an outbreak in Isiro, Congo, where 57 cases and 29 deaths were reported.
Conflict and migration complicate effort to trace outbreak
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Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director-General Dr. Jean Kaseya said Saturday that a high variety of lively cases remain locally, particularly in Mongwalu, where the primary cases were reported, “significantly complicating containment and get in touch with tracing efforts.”
Violent conflict with militants, some backed by the Islamic State group, in addition to constant population movement resulting from mining, each inside Congo and across the border in Uganda, have also posed a significant challenge to response efforts.
Officials first reported the spread of the disease in Ituri province, near Uganda and South Sudan, on Friday. On Saturday, the Africa CDC reported 336 suspected cases and 87 deaths in Congo.
“There are significant uncertainties to the true variety of infected individuals and geographic spread related to this event nowadays. As well as, there is proscribed understanding of the epidemiological links with known or suspected cases,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The 2 cases in Uganda include one person whom officials said had traveled from Congo and died at a hospital in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and one other the WHO said had also traveled from Congo.
The WHO said the high percentage of positive cases amongst samples tested, the spread to Kampala and Uganda and the clusters of deaths across Ituri “all point toward a potentially much larger outbreak than what’s currently being detected and reported, with significant local and regional risk of spread.”
Congo outbreak killed 50 before it was detected
Kaseya said slow detection delayed the response and gave the virus time to spread.
“This outbreak began in April. To this point, we don’t know the index case. It means we don’t understand how far is the magnitude of this outbreak,” Kaseya said, using a term for the primary detectable case of an epidemic.
The earliest known suspected case, a 59-year-old man, developed symptoms on April 24 and died at a hospital in Ituri on April 27.
By the point health authorities were first alerted to the outbreak via social media on May 5, 50 deaths had already been recorded, the Africa CDC said.
The WHO said not less than 4 deaths have been reported amongst healthcare staff who showed Ebola symptoms.
Diagnostics and vaccines have been a significant problem for Africa
Shanelle Hall, principal adviser to the top of Africa CDC, told reporters Saturday that there have been 4 therapeutics into account for the Bundibugyo virus, but no vaccine was being actively considered.
An even bigger issue is that even existing vaccines and therapeutics for other Ebola viruses aren’t manufactured in Africa. Africa’s struggle to get vaccines from richer countries through the COVID-19 pandemic spurred different efforts to speed up its capability to fabricate shots, but resources remain scarce.
Kaseya said the demand for a vaccine for a rare virus like Bundibugyo, which isn’t as deadly because the Ebola Zaire distinguished in Congo’s past outbreaks, has been the recurring issue in discussions with pharmaceutical corporations over vaccine manufacturing,
“If we’re serious on this continent, we want to fabricate what we want,” he said. “We cannot each day search for others to return to inform us what they’re doing.”