![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/For-Ebola-spread.jpeg\")
While transmission eases in the original Ituri province hotspot, Ebola Bundibugyo virus continues to spread in many parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n\tWhile transmission eases in the original Ituri province hotspot, Ebola Bundibugyo virus continues to spread in many parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n
The Ebola Bundibugyo virus outbreak is showing initial signs of containment in the Ituri province of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo \u2013 where it first surfaced in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But in North Kivu province, to the south, the cases are still rising fast \u2013 with the number\u00a0 of weekly cases nearly doubled over the past two weeks, from about 100 to 200 cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, there are mixed signals, which make it difficult to define a single trend, said WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and other senior WHO staff at a Geneva press conference on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To date,\u00a0 more than 7200 cases have been reported, and over 3500 deaths across seven DRC provinces. \u201cAlthough there are signs of reduced transmission in Ituri, it\u2019s reducing from a high level in the past week alone, around 300 new cases and 160 deaths were reported, accounting for nearly half the national total,\u201d Tedros said.\u00a0 \u00a0WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concer<\/a>n in May.\u00a0<\/p>\n With regards to trends elsewhere, \u201cthe area is so vast that it\u2019s hard to speak of a single epidemic,\u201d Tedros noted, referring to DRC\u2019s span, a country the size of western Europe. \u201cIt\u2019s many outbreaks in many places. We must get the response right in every one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere are major cities such as Kisangani, home to 1.5 million people, and remote villages. There are conflict-affected areas, mining zones, and sparsely populated lands near the border with South Sudan in a region of very high population mobility.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn many areas, roads are barely passable and reaching people by small aircraft is often hard. And while most Congolese people support the response, a small minority have attacked aid workers and health facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Urges approval of UN draft declaration on pandemics before the General Assembly\u00a0 Tedros urged WHO and UN member states to approve a draft resolution on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, due to be considered at a High Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly on 25 September, <\/a>saying that the declaration could help move the world from the kind of \u2018ad hoc\u2019 actions that have been a feature of the Ebola response to more coherent measures.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe world remains insufficiently prepared,\u201d the WHO head declared. \u201cIn the draft declaration, countries are committing to expand research and geographically diversified production, so vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments can be available, affordable, and accessible within the first 100 days of a pandemic threat.<\/p>\n \u201cThe draft declaration also calls for a one-health approach, inclusive community engagement, action against misinformation, stronger implementation of the [WHO] International Health Regulations,\u201d Tedros added, referring to the rules that require countries to inform WHO promptly about any outbreak posing an epidemic risk, and coordinate its response.\u201d<\/p>\n And it calls for timely completion of the Pathogen Access and Benefit-sharing (PABS) annex to the WHO pandemic agreement \u2013 \u201cwhich member states are negotiating here in Geneva as we speak,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s essential that countries finalize negotiations so the Pandemic Agreement can begin the ratification process and enter into force.\u201d See related story here:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018Critical\u2019 to Complete Pandemic Agreement by UN Meeting in 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n In Ebola response, humanitarian crisis shadows outbreak challenges\u00a0 The deep humanitarian crisis facing DRC continues to confound response to the Ebola outbreak in multiple dimensions, the WHO officials underlined.\u00a0 The crisis is the result of years of fighting between the powerful, Rwanda-backed M-23 militia, and government forces, leading to mass displacement and loss of livelihoods.\u00a0 The conflict\u2019s resurgance in late 2024 and January 2025 made things even worse. The M-23 forces took over large chunks of eastern Congo, including the regional capital of Goma, forcing a new wave of displacement from homes and farms.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNearly a million people in Ituri alone are living in refugee camps, and then, together with that, there is hunger,\u201d observed Tedros.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amidst the rise in hunger, and threats of insurgent forces, people are less likely to turn to health clinics, leading to more maternal and newborn deaths, as well as illness and death from other treatable conditions, like HIV, the WHO DG pointed out.\u00a0<\/p>\n The conflict has also led to simmering resentment in DRC which has seen a massive response to the Ebola outbreak \u2013 while deeper, underlying problems are left to fester.\u00a0<\/p>\n Against that landscape, local communities have sometimes resented the visibly massive deployment of healthworkers \u2013 seeing it as a reflection more of cynical self-interest by western donors fearful of the virus\u2019s international spread, rather than an effort to save local lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those attitudes are changing in light of the deadly toll the virus has taken \u2013 but ever so slowly, Tedros observed: \u201cEbola is seen as a more serious, but lesser evil still\u201d in comparison to issues like the loss of livelihoods.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Humanitarian groups have asked donors for some $1.1 billion to address the deeper roots of the DRC\u2019s crisis, noted Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme.\u00a0<\/p>\n That is along with a request for some $1.3 billion from donors for the Ebola response, as such. Ihekweazu declined to say how much of those funds had actually been raised.\u00a0<\/p>\n Vaccine and therapeutic trials Along with improved case reporting and contact tracing, at least in Ituri province, the past several weeks has seen the initial rollout of the ERVEBO Ebola vaccine among health workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The vaccine, approved for the Zaire Ebolavirus strain, is being administered in the context of observational trials<\/a> to see if it also offers protection against Bundibugyo, for which no vaccine yet exists, said WHO\u2019s Meg Doherty, director of the Department of Science for Health, at the press briefing.<\/p>\n \u201cAlready, in Kisangani more than 3,000 or so persons have been vaccinated,\u201d Doherty said at the briefing, adding that soon, M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF) is planning to launch a much larger study, involving some 20,000 frontline health workers, \u201cthat will look at the vaccine\u2019s impact on Bundibugyo disease, morbidity, mortality.\u201d Kisangani is the capital of DRC\u2019s Tshopo province, just to the west of the hotspots in Ituri province.\u00a0<\/p>\n In parallel, a laboratory study of blood samples drawn from people who received the ERVEBO vaccine should also get underway in the coming two or three weeks, she said, led by the University of Antwerp and the DRC\u2019s Institut National de Recherche Biom\u00e9dicale (INRB). The study will attempt to determine if the antibodies generated against the Zaire Ebola strain can also provide cross-protection against the Bundibugyo virus strain.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then after that we will be bringing in sequentially other vaccines that are specific for Bundibugyo and those are the ChAdOx1 and the Moderna vaccines that you\u2019ve heard much about,\u201d Doherty said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The ChAdOx1 vaccine candidate is being developed by the Oxford Vaccine Group<\/a> in partnership with the Serum Institute of India, and is in Phase 1 trials. It utilizes the same adenovirus platform that underpinned the Oxford\/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, adapted to target a Bundibugyo virus protein.\u00a0<\/p>\n Moderna\u2019s mRNA-1469 vaccine candidate uses mRNA technology deployed in the COVID pandemic to teach host cells to identify and target a Bundibugyo surface glycoprotein. Phase 1 trials of that vaccine were initiated in August in Canada, supported by funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)<\/a>.<\/p>\n In terms of deployment of the vaccine candidates in DRC field trials, Doughtery did not provide a timeline.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Image Credits: X\/Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus<\/a>, X\/@DrTedros<\/a>, DRC Health Ministry<\/a>.<\/p>\n Combat the infodemic in health information and support health policy reporting from the global South. Our growing network of journalists in Africa, Asia, Geneva and New York connect the dots between regional realities and the big global debates, with evidence-based, open access news and analysis. To make a personal or organisational contribution click here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While transmission eases in the original Ituri province hotspot, Ebola Bundibugyo virus continues to spread in many parts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,137],"class_list":["post-894422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Tedros-presser-.png\")
WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adnanom Ghebreyesus<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Camp-for-displaced-persons-in-Bunia-DRC.jpeg\")
Kigonzi camp for internally displaced persons in Bunia, DRC on 2 June, one of the original virus hotspots.<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-3.40.03-PM.png\")
DRC Minister of Health, Dr. Samuel-Roger Kamba, launches a vaccination campaign against Ebola virus disease in Kisangani, Tshopo Province.<\/p>\n