Key numbers

• As of 20 October there have been 9735 confirmed cases.
• 4690 people (48.2% of confirmed cases) have died from the virus as of 20 October.
• More than 300 children had died by early August according to UNICEF - the UN’s agency for children.
• 8 of DRC’s 26 provinces had reported cases as of 18 October.
• $2.9 billion had been committed by 40 funders as of 23 September, according to Africa CDC.
• More than $2.1 billion is what donors describe in their own budget records, by our count of 42 funders, but $1.4 billion of it was already budgeted before the outbreak, and only $28.5 million is documented as new funding.
• $23 per person was spent on health in the DRC in 2023, the most recent year with data. Only three of 193 countries with data spent less.

Cases and deaths

This outbreak was declared on 15 May 2026. It is the DRC's 17th Ebola outbreak. Two days later, the WHO declared it a public health emergency of international concern, its highest level of alert.

Ebola is one of the world’s most lethal hemorrhagic fevers: the average case fatality rate is around 50%, though rates have ranged from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks. It is classified as a biosafety level 4 agent, the category reserved for the world's most dangerous pathogens.

Our tracker follows confirmed cases and deaths as published by the Congolese health ministry in its daily situation reports. The figures are updated as the ministry publishes new data.

The outbreak is concentrated in a small number of provinces in the north-east of the DRC, near the borders with Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda.

A small number of cases have been reported outside the DRC: Uganda contained its own outbreak of 20 cases, declared over on 27 August, and Kenya had confirmed nine cases and one death by 20 October, all in one cluster around a man who had lived in the DRC and travelled through Uganda. Nigeria confirmed one imported case in Abuja on 20 October.

How this outbreak compares

This outbreak has already overtaken the DRC's previous worst, from 2018 to 2020, which caused 3,470 cases and 2,287 deaths. It is now the second largest Ebola outbreak on record. Unless the conditions driving transmission in eastern DRC change, it could pass the largest, West Africa in 2014 to 2016, around the start of 2027.

The largest outbreak on record was in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, with 28,616 confirmed, probable and suspected cases and 11,310 deaths across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Of those, 15,227 were laboratory-confirmed: 8,706 in Sierra Leone, 3,358 in Guinea and 3,163 in Liberia.

Because the DRC only reports confirmed cases, the chart below exclusively compares confirmed cases in both outbreaks.

A strain with no vaccine

There is no licensed vaccine or specific treatment for the Bundibugyo strain behind this outbreak.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations is funding three candidate vaccines, by Moderna, Oxford and IAVI, and fast-tracking clinical trials. In the meantime, Ervebo, the licensed vaccine for the Zaire strain, is being tested against Bundibugyo. At the Congolese government’s request, 70,000 doses were released in August. Vaccination of health workers began in Kisangani, and 20,000 doses are being used in a phase 3 trial against Bundibugyo.

Bundibugyo is one of six known species of Ebola virus, alongside Bombali, Reston, Sudan, Taï Forest (formerly Côte d’Ivoire) and Zaire, each named after the place it was first identified. Only Bundibugyo, Sudan and Zaire have caused large outbreaks in Africa.

Bundibugyo has caused two earlier outbreaks, in Uganda in 2007 and the DRC in 2012, with case fatality rates of 30% and 50%.

The international funding response

Dozens of countries and organisations have pledged support. Africa CDC's tracker put donor commitments at about $2.9 billion from 40 funders on 23 September, including $887 million from the United States. The joint Africa CDC and WHO response plan asked for $518 million to cover the DRC and its neighbours from June to November.

Much of that money is not new. ONE Data analysed donors' own budget records, which account for more than $2.1 billion of the total. About $1.4 billion of it was already in their budgets or reserves before the outbreak was declared. It came from existing programmes, standing emergency reserves and regular aid budgets. That $1.4 billion includes about $200 million moved from other work, such as the Pandemic Fund’s $175.7 million taken from preparedness projects in nine countries. Only $28.5 million is documented as new money so far. The remaining $700 million has no published source. The other $800 million in Africa CDC’s $2.9 billion figure comes from its own tracker and goes beyond what funders have announced.

These figures are commitments, which are promises of money. Disbursements are money actually paid out. On 14 October, Africa CDC said about $962 million had been disbursed directly to international organisations and NGOs. However, DRC authorities had been told what happened to only $220 million of it. Africa CDC has asked donors for the full record so every dollar can be traced from commitment to the services delivered in communities.

What makes it harder to contain

The outbreak is hitting a health system that was already underfunded, carrying heavy debt and losing aid. On the ground, low trust, violence and other epidemics are hampering the response which is driven by unpaid community workers and international groups like MSF.

A health system with little to spare

The DRC’s per capita GDP was $807 in 2025, among the ten lowest in the world. An estimated 69% of the population lives below the national poverty line.

In 2023, the most recent year with data, the DRC spent $2.5 billion on health, or $23 per person. That covers spending by the government, donors and individuals. Only three countries spent less per person. Families paid the largest share out of their own pockets, at 38%, followed closely by donors, at 37%.

The government's own share is small but growing. It spent $464 million on health in 2023, up from $157 million in 2017. That works out to $4.39 per person, up 42% since 2015, but still just 18.7% of all health spending. Between 2021 and 2026, the DRC’s Africa Health Security Index scores for detecting epidemics and responding quickly rose by 11.4 and 29.1 points.

Debt is another claim on the same small budget. In 2023 the DRC spent $399 million servicing its public external debt, nearly as much as its government spent on health that year.

Aid fell just before the outbreak

With donors paying for more than a third of the country’s health care, the system was exposed when aid fell.

Large aid cuts across donor countries in 2024 and 2025 led to a 23% drop in aid in 2025 in real terms across the governments the OECD tracks, the largest fall it has recorded. The OECD expects health aid to the DRC to be 47% lower in 2026 than in 2024. The sudden cuts left the DRC’s health system exposed just as the country was making progress of its own.

Obstacles to the response

Health workers carry much of the risk in every Ebola response. By 19 October 2026, 301 health workers had been infected and 48 had died. Many have also gone unpaid. In July, workers at the Rwampara treatment centre went on strike over wages that had not been paid since May.

Trust is hard to build. Many people in affected areas have doubted the outbreak is real. In a June 2026 survey of 391 people in Ituri, 60% of respondents said there were people in their community who did not believe there was an outbreak. Responders also work amid conflict, and the WHO recorded 12 attacks on health care by mid-August 2026, with more reports under verification.

By October 2026, most deaths were happening in the community rather than in treatment centres. That makes unsafe burials more likely, and because a body can still carry high levels of the virus, they are one of the ways Ebola spreads.

Ebola is not the only epidemic in eastern DRC. By late August, cholera had caused more than 44,000 cases and 1,300 deaths, with South Kivu and North Kivu the most affected provinces.

By 14 October, polio cases had reached 71, against 7 in all of 2025. Vaccine-derived poliovirus is the weakened virus in the oral polio vaccine: where too few children are immunised, it can circulate long enough to regain the ability to cause paralysis and then spread from child to child. It paralyses mostly young children, and it emerges where vaccination coverage has fallen, so the response to it is more vaccination.

As the response absorbs resources, routine care suffers. Between April and June 2026, use of essential health services fell 42% in the four hotspot health zones of Bunia, Mongbwalu, Nizi and Rwampara, and the Emergency Committee reported on 28 August that maternal deaths in Ituri had doubled since May.