DR Congo's Seventeenth Ebola Outbreak
On 5 May 2026 the WHO received an alert about an unknown illness with high mortality in Mongbwalu health zone in Ituri province, in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including the deaths of four health workers within four days. On 14 May the national biomedical research institute (INRB) in Kinshasa tested 13 blood samples from Rwampara health zone, and eight were positive for an ebolavirus; sequencing the next day identified the Bundibugyo species. On 15 May the health ministry declared the country's 17th Ebola outbreak, in the health zones of Rwampara, Mongbwalu and Bunia.
This map follows the outbreak through the health zones (zones de santé), the units in which the DRC's health system reports cases. It runs from mid-May to mid-October 2026, when the outbreak had reached 65 health zones in seven provinces and the WHO had not declared it over.
May: Ituri and the Kivus
On 15 and 16 May Uganda confirmed two unlinked cases in Kampala in people who had travelled from the DRC, and on 17 May the WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. By 18 May there were 33 confirmed cases in seven health zones, including single cases in Butembo, Goma and Katwa in North Kivu. On 21 May South Kivu became the third province, with cases in Miti-Murhesa health zone. By the end of May, 23 health zones had recorded a first confirmed case, most of them in Ituri.
June and July: West Along the Roads
In June the outbreak grew mainly inside Ituri: the DRC passed 1,000 confirmed cases around 20 June, almost all of them in Ituri, and 14 more health zones recorded their first case that month. At the end of June the virus left the two eastern provinces along the road west: a traveller from Nia-Nia died in Wamba health zone in Haut-Uélé on 29 June, and another case from Nia-Nia died in Kisangani, in Tshopo province, on 27 June and was confirmed on 30 June. By 13 July the DRC counted 2,011 confirmed cases in five provinces, and around 20 July it passed 1,000 confirmed deaths.
Uganda's outbreak stayed small: 20 confirmed cases, 15 of them imported and 5 from local transmission, with two deaths. The last case was reported on 21 June. Uganda's health ministry declared its outbreak over on 28 July; the WHO and Africa CDC recognised the end on 27 August.
August to October: Seven Provinces
On 12 August a case in Buta made Bas-Uélé the sixth province. The DRC passed 5,000 confirmed cases around 16 August and 3,000 confirmed deaths by the end of the month. On 10 September a case was reported in Bulu health zone in Sud-Ubangi, about 1,000 km west of the epicentre, making it the seventh province, and in September Dungu, in Haut-Uélé near the South Sudan border, was added. Confirmed deaths passed 4,000 in early October.
In early October a Kenyan citizen who had lived in the DRC and had been ill for about a month travelled by road via Beni to Kampala and flew from Entebbe to Nairobi on 3 October. He died on 5 October, and Kenya announced its first confirmed case on 6 October. On 12 October the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reported 9,144 confirmed cases and 4,410 confirmed deaths in the DRC, in 65 of the 167 health zones of the seven affected provinces; Ituri accounted for 6,734 cases, North Kivu for 1,938 and Haut-Uélé for 391.
Four patients were treated in Europe, in Berlin, Frankfurt, France and Leiden in the Netherlands; they appear in the event notes but are not drawn on the map.
How to Read the Map
Each health zone is coloured by the month of its first confirmed case: red for May, orange for June, yellow for July, green for August, teal for September and cyan for October. Grey zones belong to an affected province but have no confirmed case. By the last frame the 65 affected zones are 28 in Ituri, 17 in North Kivu, 7 in Haut-Uélé, 7 in Tshopo, 4 in Bas-Uélé and one each in South Kivu and Sud-Ubangi. Circles mark Uganda's 20 confirmed cases in Kampala and Kenya's single imported case in Nairobi, and a line traces that traveller's route from Buta via Kisangani, Beni and Kampala. The bar at the top counts confirmed deaths in the DRC.
The map shows confirmed cases only, not probable or suspected ones. A zone is coloured from the first date any source lists it as affected and appears at the next keyframe; keyframes follow the weekly WHO situation reports, so dates are rounded to the report week. The jump in deaths in late July partly reflects a retrospective reconciliation of earlier data. The newest zone, Dakwa (first case 8 October), is missing from the boundary data and is drawn as Ango, the zone the WHO shades on its own map.
How the Map Was Made
The date of each zone's first confirmed case was taken from the daily situation reports of the DRC Ministry of Health and its National Institute of Public Health (INSP), reports 1 to 151, and checked against WHO AFRO weekly external situation reports 1 to 22, WHO Disease Outbreak News, ECDC, the UK Health Security Agency's weekly outbreak summaries and Wikipedia. Health-zone boundaries come from OpenStreetMap (via the Humanitarian Data Exchange) and provinces from GRID3's DRC health zone dataset.
Chronological Timeline
- 5 May 2026 — WHO alerted to a deadly illness in Mongbwalu, Ituri
- 15 May 2026 — DRC declares its 17th Ebola outbreak (Bundibugyo) in Rwampara, Mongbwalu and Bunia; Uganda confirms an imported case in Kampala
- 17 May 2026 — WHO declares a public health emergency of international concern
- 18 May 2026 — Cases in Butembo, Goma and Katwa, North Kivu
- 21 May 2026 — South Kivu becomes the third province
- 20 June 2026 — DRC passes 1,000 confirmed cases
- 29–30 June 2026 — Cases in Wamba (Haut-Uélé) and Kisangani (Tshopo)
- 20 July 2026 — DRC passes 1,000 confirmed deaths
- 28 July 2026 — Uganda's health ministry declares its outbreak over
- 12 August 2026 — Buta: Bas-Uélé becomes the sixth province
- 16 August 2026 — DRC passes 5,000 confirmed cases
- 10 September 2026 — Bulu: Sud-Ubangi becomes the seventh province
- 6 October 2026 — Kenya confirms an imported case in Nairobi
- 12 October 2026 — 9,144 confirmed cases and 4,410 deaths in 65 health zones
Step through the outbreak week by week in the interactive map, click a health zone or marker for details, or embed the map on your own site. It can also be exported as an animated GIF for briefings and presentations.
Explore the full interactive map →