Deadly Ebola outbreak spreads

A FIRST Ebola case has been confirmed in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's South Kivu province, in an area under the Rwanda-backed M23 militia’s control, the armed group’s spokesperson said on Thursday.

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Health workers in protective gear prepare to board a plane at the airport in Monrovia, Liberia, on August 12, 2014.

(REUTERS)

Efforts to get a grip on the latest outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic disease, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an international emergency, have been hampered by the DRC’s long-running conflicts, including that between the Congolese army and the M23.

Having seized swathes of land in the mineral-rich east with Rwanda’s help, the M23 has set up to govern for the long run in areas under its control, installing a parallel administration to the Congolese government.

But the armed group has never had to manage the response to a serious epidemic of a disease like Ebola, which has killed more than 15000 people in Africa in the past half-century.

According to the M23 spokesperson, tests “confirm a new positive case” from the South Kivu provincial capital Bukavu, which fell into M23 hands in February 2025. But the case involved a “person coming from Kisangani”, a major city in the eastern Tshopo province where no Ebola infections from the current outbreak have so far been recorded.

The risk from a deadly outbreak is high in central Africa but remains low globally, the WHO said on Wednesday, adding that the virus had likely been spreading for months. The outbreak of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever was declared in eastern DRC last Friday. The 17th Ebola outbreak to hit the DRC is already suspected of having caused 139 deaths from around 600 probable cases.

“We expect those numbers to keep increasing, given the amount of time the virus was circulating before the outbreak was detected,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.