https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/ebola-outbreak-spreading-faster-than-response-aid-group-says-6038647Ebola Outbreak Spreading Faster Than Response, Aid Group SaysThe World Health Organization’s director-general also said the epidemic ‘is outpacing us.’
The coffin of a person suspected of having died from Ebola is tied onto a pick up truck by health workers at a hospital in Bunia, Congo, on May 25, 2026.by Zachary Stieber
5/26/2026
The Ebola outbreak in Africa could become the deadliest in history because it is spreading faster than responders can deal with it, an aid group said on May 26.
Officials failed to initially detect the outbreak due to a lack of testing sufficient to identify the Bundibugyo virus, a rarer type of virus that causes Ebola. The outbreak is centered in the Ituri province in the northeast of Congo, also known as the DRC, where fighting regularly displaces people from their homes and hospitals.
“The initial failure to detect this outbreak has allowed it to spread to several areas of Ituri province in northeast DRC, where the first cases were identified, as well as to North Kivu (just to the south of Ituri) and South Kivu provinces, and now Uganda,” the International Rescue Committee, one of the aid groups on the ground, said in a report published on Tuesday.
With cases reported in key population centers such as Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and Kampala in Uganda, there is a significant risk of onward spread of the disease, the group assessed.
“The warning signs are flashing red,” Bob Kitchen, vice president of emergencies for the group, said in a statement. “Eastern DRC is confronting this outbreak more fragile and less prepared than during the 2018–2020 outbreak that killed more than 2,000 people—and with fewer resources to fight it. Increased conflict and cuts to global aid funding have dismantled defenses at exactly the wrong moment.”
The outbreak has risen to 101 confirmed cases, about 220 suspected deaths, and more than 900 suspected cases, about one month after the outbreak was first detected. Other countries, such as Rwanda and the United States, have restricted travel from people who have been in Congo or intensified border checks.
“The delay in detecting the outbreak means that we are now playing catch-up with a very fast-moving epidemic,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director-general, told a meeting of African ministers on Monday. “We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment, the epidemic is outpacing us.”
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