2026 DRC Bundibugyo virus outbreak

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The Democratic Republic of the Congo's 17th Ebola outbreak since 1976 and only the third recorded Bundibugyo virus disease outbreak, after Uganda in 2007 and the DRC's Isiro cluster in 2012. First signalled from Mongbwalu Health Zone in Ituri Province at the end of April 2026 and confirmed by the INRB laboratory in Kinshasa on 14 May, it became a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 17 May and, by August, the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded in the DRC and the second-largest on record anywhere, exceeded only by the 2013–2016 West Africa epidemic. It has spread across eight of the DRC's 26 provinces — Ituri, North Kivu, Haut-Uélé, Tshopo, Bas-Uélé, South Kivu, Sud-Ubangi and, since 16 October, Nord-Ubangi — with imported cases in Uganda, whose outbreak has been declared over, in France, in Kenya, where a case imported on 5 October has been followed by a cluster of eight more among his contacts, and, on 20 October, in Nigeria; patients diagnosed in the DRC have also been evacuated to Germany and the Netherlands for treatment. There is no licensed vaccine and no specific therapeutic for Bundibugyo virus: the Zaire-strain vaccine Ervebo is being given to health workers within a research protocol, and overt bleeding appears in only about 10% of cases, delaying isolation. The outbreak remains active.