More than 70 health workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have now contracted Ebola since the country’s latest outbreak was officially declared in mid-May, a senior World Health Organization official said this week, as the virus tears through a health system already strained by conflict, mass displacement, and years of underfunding.
WHO emergency director Marie Roseline Belizaire told reporters by video link from the outbreak’s epicenter in eastern Congo that 75 healthcare workers have been infected with Ebola and that 17 of them have died. She described the situation as “evolving so fast,” warning that the broader Ebola outbreak “remains serious” even as international teams scramble to contain it. “It is a really high price that the system, the healthcare system, is paying, because we don’t have enough healthcare workers in DRC,” Belizaire said.
Congolese health authorities reported on Thursday that the Ebola outbreak has now killed 232 people and infected 896 others across 31 health zones nationwide. Officials believe the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus had already been circulating for months before the government formally confirmed the outbreak on May 15, meaning many doctors and nurses were exposed before anyone realized Ebola was present. Protective equipment such as gloves and masks reportedly remains scarce at several facilities, leaving frontline staff dangerously underprotected.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo already has one of the lowest ratios of health workers to population anywhere in the world — roughly 11 per 10,000 people, according to WHO figures — making every Ebola infection among medical staff especially costly. Belizaire said China and Uganda have begun sending medical teams to support the response, and that the WHO is offering psychological support to health workers who have grown fearful of treating patients after watching colleagues fall ill. “When they are explaining to you how they live it, how they were infected. It can break your heart,” she said.
Neighboring Uganda has confirmed 19 Ebola cases and two deaths linked to the outbreak. In response, African Union member states have pledged nearly $1bn to help eastern Congo and Uganda fight the disease, though health officials caution that the outbreak has not yet reached its peak.
Concern is mounting over conditions inside Congo’s displacement camps, where crowding, weak sanitation, and resistance to testing could let Ebola spread without detection. At least 30 people have died since early May in the Kigonze camp near Bunia, in Ituri province, with camp officials calling the death toll unprecedented. Authorities could not immediately confirm Ebola as the cause because residents had refused testing of the living and the dead until Thursday, according to a camp spokesperson and the aid group Caritas. Witnesses, however, described symptoms consistent with Ebola, including fever, headaches, and vomiting. “People didn’t just die like this before,” camp spokesperson Desire Grodya Bapi said.
Kigonze alone is home to more than 15,000 people, and the deaths there have heightened fears that Ebola could be spreading among the more than five million people displaced across eastern Congo. Ituri province accounts for over 90 percent of the nearly 900 confirmed cases recorded so far, and Ebola deaths have already surfaced in at least one other camp in the province.
Aid workers warn that funding cuts are compounding the danger. Several donors, including the United States under President Donald Trump, have scaled back support for water, hygiene, and sanitation programs that are crucial to curbing a disease spread through bodily fluids. United Nations data shows that funding for toilets and handwashing facilities in Congo more than halved between 2024 and 2025, dropping to roughly $38m, while this year’s $80m appeal remains only 21 percent funded. According to health officials, this could make it even harder to stop Ebola from reaching more of the country’s hundreds of overcrowded displacement camps.
