DR Congo's Ebola outbreak becomes deadliest in history with 2,325 deaths

DR Congo's health ministry has confirmed that the country's ongoing Ebola outbreak is now the deadliest in its history, with 4,945 recorded cases and 2,325 deaths. The toll surpasses the 2018-2020 North Kivu epidemic, previously the country's worst, which killed more than 2,280 people over nearly two years before being declared over.

The current outbreak is driven by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, a rarer strain first identified during a 2007 outbreak in Uganda. Unlike the more common Zaire ebolavirus, for which the Ervebo vaccine has been deployed in the DRC's previous outbreaks, Bundibugyo has no licensed vaccine. That gap forces health workers to rely on supportive care, strict isolation of patients and contact tracing rather than immunization to slow the virus's spread.

Response efforts have been complicated further by a severe shortage of clean water in affected communities. Containing Ebola, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids, depends heavily on rigorous hygiene measures, hand-washing stations and safe burial practices, all of which are harder to sustain where water access is limited.

DR Congo has recorded more Ebola outbreaks than any other country since the virus was first identified in 1976 near the Ebola River in what was then Zaire. Each new outbreak has tested the country's public health infrastructure, and the absence of an approved vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain now marks one of the most serious gaps exposed by this crisis, leaving international health bodies and researchers under pressure to accelerate vaccine development for the lesser-studied strain.