News · Priscilla Asante

Congo ebola outbreak ‘global emergency’ as infections pass five thousand.

The Director-General of the World Health Organization, WHO, Dr. Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has called on the international community to assist in efforts to contain the ebola outbreak, which has killed more than two thousand 320 people. 

Following an emergency meeting yesterday, the Director General said the epidemic is far from being under control and still remains a global health issue. 

He announced that the number of cases in the country has passed five thousand and the outbreak is the seventeenth in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC and is now the deadliest, exceeding the number of people killed during the outbreak from 2018 to 2020.

The emergency has caused more concern than usual for several reasons, including the fact that there is currently no approved vaccine or treatment for this strain of Ebola, known as Bundibugyo. 

Response efforts Dr. Ghebreyesus, have been further complicated by conflict in the mineral-rich DRC, misinformation, and cultural traditions, among other factors. 

He said the ions of many of the deaths show that there are chains of transmission yet to be identified warning that the epidemic will continue until every chain is found and broken. 

The outbreak was declared on May 17, 2026 but genetic sequencing of samples shows that it began spreading three months earlier, in February. 

The first volunteer to receive an experimental vaccine for Ebola was in the United Kingdom, UK last month. Hundreds of thousands of doses of the vaccine, produced by scientists at Oxford University, have already been manufactured in India and are ready for immediate use if the trials are successful.