Fastest-growing Ebola Outbreak on Record Threatens to Become Worst in History

The response to Congo’s raging Ebola epidemic has been hampered by a severe lack of funding and pervasive misinformation, according to people on the front lines.

August 26, 2026 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

Health workers tend to an Ebola patient at the Rwampara Treatment Center in Ituri, Congo, on June 18. (Moses Sawasawa/AP)

By Rael Ombuor and Rachel Chason

The Ebola epidemic raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo is on track to become the worst in history — amid a response hobbled by a severe lack of funding and rampant misinformation, according to doctors, relief organizations and global health authorities.

At least 5,605 people have been infected since the first case of the outbreak was identified May 15, of whom 2,683 had died as of Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Congo’s government records similar figures. That means the outbreak is already bigger than the one that lasted from 2018 to 2022, which killed 2,200 people, and is spreading faster in its initial months than the West Africa epidemic that began in 2014 and caused more than 11,000 deaths.

At the same point in that outbreak — about 100 days after the first case had been reported — there were only 759 recorded cases, according to the CDC, less than 15 percent of what has been recorded so far in Congo’s outbreak.

Interviews with more than a dozen doctors, relief workers and patients operating in Ituri and North Kivu — the provinces at the heart of the outbreak — suggest that the confirmed figures are likely to represent only a fraction of the total current toll.

“The situation looks bad, and it is worsening,” said Alice Ribes, the Congo-based Ebola lead for the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian group. “It’s spreading very, very fast.”

In Bunia, a city at the center of the heartbreak, there is a frightening dual reality: While the virus is quietly spreading, Ribes said, “life is continuing as if nothing is happening.”

“You have massive crowds,” she said. “Massive weddings, big parties. Churches that are completely full.”

Most people on the front lines of the response believe that the current “figures are underestimated,” she said.

“It’s a rapid fire,” said Grace Wairima, the senior Africa media and communications manager for Mercy Corps, an aid group.

The deadly viral disease spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids or contaminated surfaces. Wairima noted that many people with confirmed Ebola diagnoses do not appear on contact lists for others already in treatment. “The virus has moved through so many cracks,” she said.

Medical personnel and aid organizations say their ability to respond has been hampered by sweeping cuts in aid to Congo and the World Health Organization by the United States and other Western nations.

Especially in the early days of the outbreak, aid groups and medical personnel said, they lacked the staff, surveillance systems and emergency supplies to quickly detect infections or contain the virus as it surged. The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, in particular, had operated in Congo for decades and worked in previous Ebola outbreaks — this the 17th — to coordinate with Congo’s Ministry of Health and aid organizations on the international response.

The State Department said in a statement Tuesday that it had announced more than $512 million in direct assistance to combat the ongoing outbreak, supported 8.6 million health screenings across affected and at-risk countries, reached more than 1 million people with risk communication messaging, supported more than 180 health facilities in affected areas, contributed to the direct operation of 12 special facilities in Congo, and procured and distributed nearly 300 metric tons of supplies, among other efforts.

The WHO has said that the outbreak — caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, for which there is no vaccine or approved treatment — probably started as early as February, months before a global emergency was declared.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a speech last week that the disease was moving with “unprecedented speed.”

“We must be frank: The epidemic is far from being under control,” he said. “It had a big head start, and we are still playing catch-up.”

Tedros added that what concerns him most is “where people are dying: at home, in their communities, outside treatment centers, and outside known contact lists. … Every death like that points to a chain of transmission we have not yet found.”

Maurice Kakule, the lead doctor on Ebola cases at the General Reference Hospital in Oicha in North Kivu, said that one of the biggest difference between this outbreak and the two previous ones on which he worked is the level of surveillance.

Kakule, 42, said that because many international organizations are stretched too thin to do surveillance this time around, some health workers at his hospital have taken it upon themselves to identify and track new cases.

He said misinformation is so intense that many people who suspect they have Ebola choose to die at home instead of going to the hospital, where they fear medical interventions. The true toll, he and other local medical personnel said, could be two to three times as high as the official statistics.

“It is likely to be the worst the country has experienced, given the number of deaths we have recorded in a few months,” he said.

Muhundi Sikwaya, 30, said he started feeling sick while working his welding job in Komanda, a town in Ituri. He lost his appetite for food and was too weak to work. He said he visited a hospital and was told he had contracted malaria.

But a week later, he was only getting worse, with blood in his vomit and diarrhea. His sister, Kavuho Nyasa, flagged down a person on a motorbike for the two-hour ride back to the hospital. She said she put her brother, by then mostly unconscious, on the back of the bike, sandwiched between the driver and another rider.

It was only once he arrived at the General Reference Hospital in Oicha that he was diagnosed with Ebola.

“I thought I was a dead person,” Sikwaya told The Post a week after he was discharged from the hospital in early July.

His sister said she worries about the driver, hoping he did not catch the virus.

Kakule had treated Sikwaya, along with three other Ebola patients. The other three died, Kakule said. Two more patients have since arrived.

UNICEF staff and airport workers in Bunia receive an aircraft carrying supplies on May 19 amid intensified efforts to contain the outbreak. (Gradel Muyisa Mumbere/Reuters)

More than a month after being discharged, Sikwaya said his life has changed. Mostly, he said, he stays at home, indoors, if he is not at work, because people are too scared to interact with him.

“There is a stigma, but nothing lasts forever,” he said. “I am sure this disease will also come to an end.”

Adam Taylor contributed to this report.