WHO Director-General Expresses Deep Concern Over Ebola Outbreak Scale and Speed

The director general of the World Health Organization has said he is deeply concerned about the scale and the speed of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been at least 500 suspected cases of Ebola and 130 suspected deaths in DRC since the new outbreak began. Thirty cases had been confirmed in DRC’s north-eastern province of Ituri, and one death and one case had been confirmed in Kampala, Uganda, he added. A US citizen has also tested positive and been transferred to Germany.

“These numbers will change as field operations are scaling up, including strengthening surveillance, contact tracing and laboratory testing,” Tedros told members of the World Health assembly, who are meeting this week in Geneva.

Tedros declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern in the early hours of Sunday morning. On Tuesday he said: “This is the first time a director general has declared a PHEIC before convening an emergency committee. I did not do this lightly … I’m deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic.”

A WHO official on the ground in Bunia in Ituri warned that the outbreak could be lengthy. “I don’t think that in two months we will be done with this outbreak,” Anne Ancia, WHO’s DRC representative, told reporters in Geneva, pointing to a recent Ebola outbreak that “took two years”.

The organisation will convene its emergency committee on Tuesday to advise what recommendations it should make on how to control the outbreak. The US officially left the WHO in January in a move Donald Trump said was motivated by the organisation’s poor management of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Tedros said reports of cases in urban areas, where the virus typically finds it easier to spread, were also cause for concern. Cases among health workers indicated potential spread in clinics and hospitals, he said, and there was “significant population movement in the area”, for work and also due to conflict.

The province of Ituri, where most cases have been reported, was “highly insecure”, Ghebreyesus said. “Conflict has intensified since late 2025, and the fighting has escalated significantly over the past two months resulting in civilian deaths. Over 100,000 people have been newly displaced. And in Ebola outbreaks, you know what displacement means.”

An outbreak of the Zaire strain from 2018-2020 in Ituri and North Kivu provinces was the second deadliest on record, killing nearly 2,300 people. The international response then was complicated by widespread armed violence in eastern DRC that continues today.

Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids from infected people or animals and causes symptoms that can include high fever, vomiting and internal and external bleeding. According to the WHO, the average fatality rate from Ebola is around 50%, varying from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks.

Bundibugyo virus, the type of Ebola that is causing the current outbreak, has no vaccines or treatments.