A new Ebola outbreak has killed at least 65 to 80 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Ituri province, health officials confirmed on Friday, with 246 suspected cases recorded and fears growing that the disease may spread further across the region. Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) declared the outbreak and said preliminary tests at the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale in the capital, Kinshasa, had detected the Ebola virus in 13 of 20 samples analysed. Cases have been concentrated in the gold-mining health zones of Mongwalu and Rwampara, with additional suspected cases reported in Bunia, Ituri's provincial capital. Uganda's health ministry confirmed a separate imported case: a 59-year-old Congolese man who had travelled from DRC was admitted to a hospital in Kampala and died on Thursday.

A particularly alarming feature of this outbreak is the strain involved. Health officials identified the Bundibugyo variant — named after the Ugandan district where it first emerged in 2007, killing 37 of 149 infected people, and last detected in 2012 in northern DRC — rather than the more common Zaire strain. Unlike the Zaire strain, for which effective vaccines exist, there is currently no licensed vaccine or proven cure for the Bundibugyo variant, leaving health workers with fewer tools to contain it. Reports suggest the virus may have been circulating since April, with early deaths initially going uninvestigated and initial tests focused only on the Zaire strain, which returned negative results.

Ituri province, which shares borders with Uganda and South Sudan, presents a complex environment for outbreak control. The region's gold-mining economy drives constant population movement between rural and urban areas, while Ituri has been under military administration since 2021 due to decades of armed conflict involving multiple militia groups. Civil society representatives in Ituri have sounded the alarm, noting that communities in the affected health zones interact daily and urging immediate action.