DRC now has more than 780 confirmed cases and 180 deaths, while Uganda has recorded 19 confirmed cases, including two deaths.
On the spot, the response has expanded considerably. About 400 beds are now available and four laboratories are operational.
Two of them alone can process almost 1,000 samples per day. Yet despite this scale-up, the World Health Organization (WHO) believes that efforts remain far below what is needed to bring the outbreak under control.
“On a scale of zero to ten, compared to where this answer should be, I’d say we’re about a three or four,” said Dr. Rose Belizaire, Emergency Response Lead at WHO Africa, in an interview with Pakinomist. “The outbreak is evolving rapidly and all partners (…) need to increase their efforts on the ground to keep pace with the evolution of this epidemic.”
One month into the Ebola outbreak response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, diagnostic capacity has expanded dramatically. Four laboratories are now in operation in the affected health zones, and two of them alone can process almost 1,000 samples per day.
Eleven pillars
Today, when a person is reported as a suspected case in a local community, an investigation team is immediately dispatched. If the alert is confirmed, the patient is referred to a transit center where they await laboratory results before possibly being transferred to a treatment facility.
But the Ebola response goes far beyond medical care.
“The reaction is organized around 11 pillars in the field,” explained Dr. Belize.
Community surveillance, investigative teams, transit centers for people awaiting diagnosis, laboratories, treatment centers, infection prevention and control, and data management are among the many components mobilized under the leadership of the Congolese health authorities.
The response also includes comprehensive support for patients, their families and people exposed to the virus.
“We now have psychosocial support and nutritional support providing assistance to confirmed patients, their families and the contacts we are monitoring so that we can take a holistic approach to this outbreak,” the WHO official said.
On the ground, this approach takes very concrete forms.
“Contacts are receiving food rations,” the epidemiologist noted. As for inpatients, “they get three hot meals a day.”
The response also includes infection prevention and control measures aimed at limiting contagion.
“This includes disinfection and destruction of items contaminated with the virus,” said Dr. Belize. “It’s a whole machinery that needs to be put in place.”
Medical material is burned as part of the Ebola fight in eastern DR Congo.
We have the expertise, the resources must follow
During a recent visit to Beni, one of the areas hardest hit by the outbreak, Dr. Belizaire that she was struck by the level of preparedness among local teams.
“I was very pleased with their technical capacity to implement the response. They know what needs to be done. They also have the technical expertise,” she said.
What they lack, however, are the necessary resources to match their abilities.
“What they really lacked was the funds. They lacked the human resources, and they also lacked the logistical support required to put a robust response in place.”
Women on the front line
The outbreak is also evolving demographically.
At the beginning of the outbreak, men aged 20 to 49 were the group most affected. Today, women represent the most affected category, while cases among children are increasing.
For Dr. Belizaire, this shift is not surprising.
“In outbreaks of infectious diseases, women are generally the most affected. They are the ones who take care of family members, their husbands, their parents and their children.”
A listening response
For the WHO, adapting the response to the realities on the ground has become an essential part of the fight against Ebola.
“We try to meet with all segments of the population to understand their needs and adapt the response to their reality,” explained Dr. Belize.
During her travels, the WHO official said she has met with a wide range of groups, including women, local entrepreneurs, motorcycle taxi drivers and community leaders.
Concerns vary from group to group. Entrepreneurs worry about the impact of the outbreak on their ability to earn a living, while motorcycle taxi drivers, who provide much of the transport in the affected areas, are among the most vulnerable.
“An outbreak always occurs in a specific context. We therefore have to adapt the response to the real needs of society and to the realities of their movements.”
Families sheltering in an IDP camp in Ituri province in September 2025 (file).
A porous edge
This reality is particularly evident in the border region between Aru in the DRC and Arua in Uganda, where Dr. Belizaire last weekend attended meetings that strengthened cooperation between the two countries and helped define a joint action plan.
“When you look at the border, you don’t really see a dividing line or difference between the populations,” she said. “The names are almost identical – Aru and Arua. This is because they are the same people who live there and they speak the same local language.”
“Interactions are extremely intense, whether they are commercial exchanges, family exchanges or just human exchanges,” she added.
The two countries have therefore agreed to deploy joint team along the border, strengthen laboratory capacity and establish a treatment center jointly managed by Congolese and Ugandan teams.
The goal is also to bring care closer to populations living on the Congolese side to reduce the need to travel to Uganda to seek treatment.
‘I wanted to thank you’
In the last month, Dr. Belizaire’s long days have been filled with coordination meetings, field visits and discussions with affected local communities. They have also been marked by memorable encounters, and this week was no exception.
“While I was at a meeting, someone was determined to see me at any cost,” she recalled.
When she finally went to meet him, she discovered he was a WHO colleague. After exchanging a few greetings, he asked her:
“But Doctor, don’t you recognize me?”
She didn’t. Then he explained why he had been so eager to meet her.
“I wanted to thank you. Thank you for saving my life. You are one of the people whose actions made it possible for me to still be alive today.”
The man is a survivor of a previous Ebola outbreak in the DRC. Today he works as an epidemiologist for the WHO.
He also reminded her that he had been among the first to raise the alarm during the current outbreak after a priest informed him that a corpse had been bleeding from the nose and mouth during a burial in Aru.
For Dr. Belizaire illustrates at the meeting how lessons learned from successive outbreaks continue to strengthen the response today.
“This might be my best paycheck this week,” she said. “Seeing people whose lives we helped save become my colleagues and work in the same organization as me.”
