The Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo passed 1,198 combined cases on Tuesday, with 121 laboratory-confirmed infections and 1,077 suspected cases across Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, the DRC health ministry said in its latest situation report. The combined death toll now stands at 255, including 17 deaths among confirmed cases, a case fatality rate that closely tracks the pattern from the 2007 Ugandan outbreak that first identified the Bundibugyo virus.
Uganda confirmed two more cases in Kampala on Tuesday, taking its national total to five, all linked to the eastern DRC outbreak through cross-border travel or contact with travellers from Ituri. Ugandan health minister Jane Ruth Aceng said the country had widened contact tracing to seven districts and that 1,840 contacts were now under daily follow-up. The Mulago National Referral Hospital opened a dedicated Ebola treatment unit on Monday with capacity for forty patients.
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on May 17, only the eighth such declaration since the framework was created. WHO regional director Matshidiso Moeti said the agency was working to vaccinate roughly six thousand frontline health workers in Ituri and North Kivu with an experimental Bundibugyo-specific vaccine candidate produced by the Sabin Vaccine Institute, but only 1,400 doses had reached affected sites as of Sunday.
No licensed vaccine or therapeutic currently exists for the Bundibugyo strain. The Ervebo vaccine, which proved highly effective against the Zaire ebolavirus during the 2018-2020 outbreak, does not cross-protect. Two experimental Bundibugyo vaccine candidates, one at Oxford and one at the US National Institutes of Health, remain in Phase I and Phase II trials respectively.
On the US side, the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Homeland Security have maintained enhanced entry screening for arriving passengers from DRC and Uganda since May 18, including temperature checks and a 21-day daily symptom-monitoring requirement. One US physician working in Ituri tested positive in mid-May and was evacuated to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where he remains in stable condition. No further US cases have been reported.
The DRC government has set up two new treatment centres in Bunia and Beni and reactivated thirteen previously closed Ebola response coordination cells, but funding shortfalls remain. WHO's emergency appeal for the outbreak, launched on May 18, has so far received only $34 million against a request of $112 million. The United States has pledged $18 million, the European Union $9 million and the United Kingdom $4 million.