MSF teams are working around the clock on a large-scale response in DRC, in collaboration with the Congolese health authorities, WHO, and partners. More than 2,800 of our colleagues are responding to the outbreak, working in five of the seven affected provinces.

One of our main activities is operating Ebola treatment centres in areas where cases have been reported. These centres provide specialised care and contain the spread of the disease. We currently have Ebola treatment centres in Mongbwalu, Bunia, Niania, Bambu, and Fataki in Ituri province, and Butembo and Beni in North Kivu province, as well as in Kisangani in Tshopo province. We also have a facility on standby in Goma, North Kivu province.

We are also running and establishing isolation units and triage systems within health facilities across the affected provinces.

Several tonnes of equipment and supplies have made it to DRC, and more are on the way. This includes personal protective equipment (PPE), medical equipment, medicines, generators, solar panels, disinfectants, and hygiene equipment.

The rest of our activities are still being defined. However, our response is being structured around the following pillars:

• treatment and care of patients; 
• isolation and triage; 
• infection prevention and control, including safe provision of other essential care; 
• surveillance and detection; 
• strengthening response capacity, including through material and human resources support; and 
• continuity of essential healthcare services.

Importantly, protecting staff and patients through safeguarding, duty of care, and Ebola prevention measures, while ensuring continued access to essential healthcare services, are among our priorities. Community engagement is also a key aspect of the response. The outbreak response must be built with communities and cannot come at the expense of other lifesaving healthcare.

In Uganda, we rehabilitated an Ebola treatment centre in Kampala and an isolation centre in Bwera, a town near the border with DRC. MSF teams also trained health staff and strengthened infection prevention and isolation capacity in several facilities.
 

Strong community engagement will bring this epidemic to an end. We are seeing that people are reaching care too late, or not at all. This increases the risk of the virus spreading. There is an urgent need for existing surveillance and rapid detection systems to be scaled-up, especially in hard-to-reach areas. Treatment centres are essential, but they cannot end the outbreak alone.

Communities must be listened to, and partnerships must be built with them so that people feel safe seeking care. We also need a faster, more flexible, more coordinated response that can reach communities who need care quickly. To sustain such rapid response teams, more operational support is needed from UN agencies, including the WHO. 

DRC has faced 16 outbreaks of Ebola disease since it was first identified in 1976 – this outbreak is the 17th. Nearly all of the previous outbreaks have been of the Ebola (Zaire) virus.

However, the 2026 Ebola outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus. Dealing with this outbreak will be difficult, given there is a short supply of testing kits for diagnosis and there are no approved treatments or vaccines for Bundibugyo virus. The availability of diagnostic tests and other essential tools for the response must continue to expand.

People in the areas affected areas are also living through extreme levels of conflict and displacement. It may be complicated to identify, follow up, and isolate cases as people are on the move and the health system is under resourced.
 

An Ebola disease outbreak is ongoing in DRC. Cases have been identified in Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Tshopo, Bas Uélé, Haut-Uélé and South Ubangi provinces. In Uganda, the outbreak was declared over on 27 August.

Outside of the Ebola outbreak, people living in Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu provinces in DRC are already facing a humanitarian crisis. The provinces are affected by violence, displacement, chronic poverty, and weak infrastructure. These elements place strain on health facilities and hinder surveillance, contact tracing, and timely treatment — the main pillars of an effective response. As well, poor roads, armed checkpoints, shifting frontlines, and needing to move between areas under the control of different armed groups slow down the transportation of tests to laboratories.
 

“Ebola disease” is a disease caused by any virus within the genus of Orthoebolavirus. We are not dealing with a strain of Ebola, but a virus. Bundibugyo virus is among the three well-known species: Ebola (or Zaire) virus, Sudan virus, and Bundibugyo virus.

This is the third detected outbreak involving the Bundibugyo virus, following outbreaks in Uganda in 2007-2008 and in DRC in 2012.

There are no approved vaccines or treatments available for Bundibugyo virus and those which have been developed for Ebola virus, such as the ERVEBO vaccine, have not been approved for Bundibugyo. We are conducting a study among frontline workers on the effects of the ERVEBO vaccine, the Ministry of Health, Africa CDC, the Congolese National Institute for Biomedical Research, and scientific partners.

Diagnosing people is also challenging for Bundibugyo virus; tools, such as GeneXpert – an automated, cartridge-based molecular diagnostic system – developed for Ebola virus cannot be used. Testing has to be done through conventional PCR testing, which is more cumbersome and requires a higher level of training to use.

A clinical trial, named PARTNERS, was launched in early July to identify the first effective treatments for Bundibugyo virus. MSF is collaborating on the trial, along with other humanitarian, clinical, and international research partners. Learn more about the trial by clicking on this link.

As the current Ebola disease outbreak disproportionately affects children, they can’t be left out from any research taking place. Children need to be meaningfully included in planned, evidence-generating research on medical countermeasures.
 

One of our biggest concerns is that we do not know the full picture of the outbreak, due to a lack of diagnostics and underreporting of cases. The epidemiological situation remains unclear and moving fast.

We also see that the current response, including our own, falls short of what is needed, despite recent efforts to scale up. Critical gaps in surveillance, testing, and rapid case detection must be urgently addressed. The local health system needs laboratories and training to safely conduct tests, and the producers of diagnostic tests and other essential tools need to scale up availability.

The response is also concentrated in urban areas, which makes it difficult for people in hard-to-reach areas to seek and reach Ebola care. In rural areas, communities lack the support they need.

The affected areas in DRC are also highly insecure. Because of conflict and mining activities, people are highly mobile, which may accelerate transmission and complicate efforts to contain the outbreak. Health facilities are also under immense strain, and may not have adequate infection prevention and control measures to manage Ebola cases.
 

MSF has vast experience responding to Ebola disease outbreaks. We have been an active partner in many Ebola responses, including the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. We also have experience with Ebola caused by Bundibugyo virus, having responded to outbreaks in 2007 and 2012.