The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo — already the deadliest in the country's history — has spread to a seventh province, raising fears that the virus may reach neighbouring countries. The governor of Sud-Ubangi, a northwestern province bordering the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), confirmed that a sample from the Bulu health district tested positive for the Bundibugyo virus, the rare strain driving the current outbreak. A local lawmaker identified the patient as a 23-year-old man who had died before samples were taken. As of mid-September, the outbreak has recorded 6,942 confirmed cases and 3,349 deaths since it was declared on 15 May.
The patient's journey illustrates how mobile populations are amplifying the crisis. In just three weeks, the man travelled from South Kivu province — in eastern Congo, where confirmed cases have been reported — through Rwanda and Uganda, then back into Congo via Ituri province, the outbreak's epicentre. He passed through active transmission zones including Aru and Bunia before reaching Kisangani in Tshopo province, where he was hospitalised after a road accident. He left by boat along the Congo River, developing symptoms on 27 August, and arrived in Akula in Sud-Ubangi on 3 September, dying there on 7 September. Thirty-eight identified contacts have been placed under quarantine. Crucially, Sud-Ubangi does not border any of the six previously affected eastern provinces, meaning investigators must trace how the virus bridged that geographic gap.
The spread into western Congo has alarmed health authorities. The World Health Organization has warned that the outbreak remains out of control and is on track to surpass the 2014–2016 West Africa outbreak — the deadliest on record, which killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. WHO has also flagged the risk of cross-border spread into the Central African Republic and South Sudan. While new cases in Ituri have recently declined, they have risen sharply in North Kivu and Haut-Uélé.
Response efforts face severe structural obstacles. Ongoing rebel violence, mass displacement, a health workers' strike and intense population movements have all hampered containment, alongside weak surveillance infrastructure and insufficient contact tracing and laboratory capacity. Adding to the difficulty, there is no approved vaccine or treatment for the Bundibugyo strain. Congo last month began vaccinating frontline workers with the Ervebo vaccine — effective against a different, more common Ebola strain called Zaire — while clinical trials for a Bundibugyo-specific vaccine are now under way in Tshopo, Haut-Uélé and Bas-Uélé provinces, with Ituri set to follow.
To bolster care capacity, a new Ebola treatment centre was inaugurated in Kisangani, capital of Tshopo province, staffed by the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). The facility has 22 beds with a capacity of 50. MSF emergency coordinator Kate Nolan said the centre would improve both patient care and isolation capacity, helping to break community transmission chains. Kisangani recorded its first case of the current outbreak in July; its position as a major river transport hub makes robust treatment infrastructure there especially critical to preventing further spread.