The World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday, escalating its response after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths and the spread of the virus across two borders. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the determination, the agency's highest alarm, in a post on X.
The declaration sharpens a response to an outbreak the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention first confirmed Friday with 65 deaths in Ituri province. What has changed in 48 hours is the pathogen and the geography. Health authorities have identified the cause as the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of Ebola for which there are no approved vaccines or therapeutics, and confirmed cases have surfaced in Uganda's capital, Kampala, and the eastern Congolese city of Goma.
A rarer strain
The Bundibugyo variant has been documented only twice before: in Uganda's Bundibugyo district in 2007-2008, with 149 infections and 37 deaths, and in Isiro, Congo, in 2012, with 57 cases and 29 deaths. The vaccines used against Congo's 2018-2020 Ebola-Zaire epidemic, which killed more than 1,000 people, do not protect against Bundibugyo. The WHO called the absence of countermeasures "extraordinary."
Only 13 blood samples had been tested at Congo's National Institute of Biomedical Research as of Saturday, Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said, with eight positive and five unusable for lack of volume. The WHO said the high positivity rate suggests the true caseload is larger than reported.
Cross-border spread
Uganda confirmed two laboratory-positive cases in Kampala on Friday and Saturday, both in travelers from Congo with no apparent link to each other. One patient died at Kibuli Muslim Hospital on May 14; his body was returned to Congo. President Yoweri Museveni said "there is no need for alarm, as the situation is under control," and the Uganda-Congo border remains open.
A further case was confirmed Sunday in Goma, the eastern Congolese hub now under Rwanda-backed M23 militia control. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director of the biomedical research institute, told Agence France-Presse the patient is the wife of a man who died of Ebola in Bunia and traveled there after his death while already infected. Rwanda has closed its border with Congo.
What WHO is asking
The agency urged governments to activate emergency-management systems and screen travelers at borders and on major internal roads, while advising against full border closures or trade restrictions. It recommended isolation of confirmed cases and a 21-day curb on international travel after exposure. Tedros released $500,000 in emergency funding and said a committee will meet to refine guidance.
Whether the U.S. will mount its accustomed response is contested. CBS News reported that the Trump administration's cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and its withdrawal from the WHO have thinned the federal footprint that handled past outbreaks. Craig Spencer, the Brown University physician who survived Ebola a decade ago, told the network that "Before the second Trump administration, USAID would have been on the ground." Spencer added that domestic capacity remains, citing the national quarantine unit in Nebraska, and noted Ebola "is not that great at spreading."
The WHO committee is expected to issue formal recommendations in the coming days, and Africa CDC is set to update its case count Monday.