At a briefing on Tuesday, June 23, 2026, a top World Health Organization (WHO) official stated that Congo’s Ebola outbreak has the highest number of confirmed cases in the first month of any Ebola outbreak in Africa. The Bundibugyo outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has killed 267 people and infected over 1,000, was discovered later than expected.
According to specialists, the virus had been circulating for months prior to its formal declaration on May 15. After returning from the epicenter of the outbreak in Bunia last week, WHO’s Abdirahman Mahamud told a news conference in Geneva that “the response needs to expand to keep pace with the expanding outbreak, this is beginning to happen.”
Prior to this, the two largest Ebola epidemics occurred in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in West Africa, killing 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016. A less deadly outbreak occurred in the Congo in 2018. According to Reuters, at least three of the packed camps for displaced people in the eastern Congo have reported cases of Ebola. During the same briefing, Abdoulaye Wone of the International Organization for Migration stated that at least 25 cases, including 14 deaths, had been confirmed at the camps.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that more than 20 outbreaks have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa.
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