Congo's Deadliest Ebola Crisis Is Outrunning the Workers Trying to Stop It

A Virus Faster Than the Response

Every day, community health worker Gédéon Banga Ngbape and his team fan out across communities in eastern Congo looking for people who may have crossed paths with the country's fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in history. The workers investigate dozens of alerts, search for those exposed to suspected or confirmed cases, and try to get anyone showing symptoms into care before the virus spreads further. But despite their exhausting efforts, the virus keeps pulling ahead.

Between 60% and 70% of new Ebola cases are being detected among people who were not already being monitored as contacts, meaning health workers may only discover infections after patients become sick and have had opportunities to expose others. That single statistic lays bare the scale of the crisis. When surveillance fails, the chain of transmission becomes nearly impossible to break — and in Congo right now, it is failing repeatedly.

An Outbreak Unlike Any Before

The current outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo Ebola virus, and there are no approved vaccines or treatments for it, though trials are underway. That distinction from the more familiar Zaire strain of Ebola — the one for which vaccines exist — makes this crisis especially dangerous. The outbreak has killed over 2,200 people out of more than 4,700 cases, according to the latest government figures.

It is the fastest-growing outbreak on record in the Central African country and is second in size only to the West African outbreak from 2014 to 2016, during which 11,310 people died. As of August 13, Africa CDC reported that the outbreak had expanded to a sixth province, Bas-Uele, where an imported case was identified and the affected individual subsequently died. As of that date, 54 of 151 health zones are affected across the six provinces.

Strikes, Threats, and Misinformation

Strikes by some unpaid health workers, threats by rebel groups, anger from long-traumatized communities, and misinformation asserting that Ebola isn't real have significantly hindered the response. The compounding obstacles paint a picture of a public health system pushed to its absolute limit. On August 14, health workers at the Nizi Treatment Center went on strike and the facility temporarily closed. Ngbape said the health workers have not been paid in over three months.

The gaps are especially consequential in Nizi, one of the most affected health zones in Ituri province, which accounts for about 90% of Congo's Ebola cases and 80% of its deaths. Ngbape, who works at the center of this storm, is blunt about what the breakdown in surveillance means. "If surveillance does not work well, the entire response suffers," he said. "Surveillance is the engine of a response."

A Race the World Cannot Afford to Lose

The outbreak has already reached beyond Congo's borders. In May 2026, an imported case was confirmed in a US citizen who was medically evacuated to Germany, and on June 24 a further imported case was reported in France. On July 10, the US CDC reported that another US citizen working for a humanitarian organization in DRC had tested positive for Bundibugyo virus and was medically evacuated to Germany on July 13.

The international dimension underscores what epidemiologists have long warned: outbreaks contained within overwhelmed health systems don't stay contained for long. At least 1,000 of the deaths have occurred in the last three weeks alone, according to official government data, as the virus continues to spread at an alarming rate. With health workers unpaid, undertrained, and under threat, and with the surveillance system struggling to track even a majority of new cases, the path forward demands an urgent and sustained global response — not just attention, but action.