Overview
- Health authorities report the outbreak has spread across Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu provinces and crossed into Uganda, with mid-to-high hundreds of confirmed cases and more than 130 deaths.
- The U.N. refugee agency confirmed the first Ebola-related deaths inside the Kpangba displacement camp after a 60-year-old woman who broke quarantine died and her daughter later tested positive.
- WHO officials warn that testing gaps, sample backlogs and inaccessible, insecure areas create surveillance blind spots that likely hide more infections than are reported.
- All three provinces currently have very limited isolation capacity—roughly 250 beds in total—and contact tracing and safe-burial efforts are being hampered by community mistrust and attacks on response teams.
- Because the outbreak is driven by the rare Bundibugyo ebolavirus, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment, partners are accelerating experimental trials even as crowded, unsanitary camps raise the risk that cases will spread quickly and strain local services.