Ebola Crisis Escalates: South Kivu Battles Outbreak In M23-Held Territory

An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has spread to a part of eastern South Kivu province under the control of the Rwanda-backed M23 militia, the group’s spokesman said on Thursday, heightening fears of the deadly disease’s growing spread.

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 15,000 people in Africa in the past half-century and whose latest outbreak is already believed to have killed more than 130 people.

According to the M23 spokesman, tests “confirm a new positive case” from Bukavu in South Kivu. He did not specify whether the sample came from the city itself, which fell into M23 hands in February 2025, or the rural areas surrounding the South Kivu provincial capital.

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 person concerned, a compatriot aged 28, unfortunately succumbed to the disease before the diagnosis was confirmed,” the spokesman added.

“The burial was carried out in strict compliance with safety standards.”

The Congolese authorities were yet to comment on the reported case.

According to the WHO, the latest outbreak in the DRC, the 17th to hit the vast central African country of more than 100 million people, is already suspected of having caused 139 deaths out of nearly 600 probable cases.

Split By Front Lines
Many of the cases have been recorded in the epidemic’s epicentre in northeastern Ituri province, many in hard-to-access areas plagued by the Congolese east’s litany of armed groups.

Cases have also been recorded in North Kivu and neighbouring Uganda, where one person has died, but up till now not in South Kivu.

Given the difficulties in accessing the areas hit by the outbreak, few samples have been laboratory-tested and figures are based mostly on suspected cases.

Both North and South Kivu are split in two by the front lines dividing the Congolese army from the M23 armed group and its Rwandan allies.

The airport in North Kivu’s provincial capital Goma, which once helped funnel urgently needed aid into the eastern DRC by air, has been shut since the M23 seized the city in January 2025.

No vaccine or clinical treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebolavirus responsible for the current epidemic.

A US citizen who contracted Ebola while working in the DRC is currently in hospital in Germany. His spouse and three children, all asymptomatic, will be placed in isolation in the same hospital at Washington’s request, according to the German authorities.

While the WHO believes the risk from the Ebola outbreak is high both in the DRC and the wider central African region, the United Nations health agency considers the risk of a worldwide pandemic to be “low”.

In response to the outbreak, the United States on Monday announced stepped-up screening procedures for air passengers coming from the DRC, Uganda and South Sudan. A day after, Bahrain announced a month-long ban on visitors from the three countries.

On top of that, the DRC football team has cancelled a training camp in Kinshasa in preparation for the World Cup in the United States, which is co-hosting the tournament with Canada and Mexico, a team official told AFP on Wednesday.

The outbreak comes at a time when humanitarian organisations have seen their budgets slashed, particularly as a result of US aid spending cuts under President Donald Trump.

In one of his first acts on returning to office last year, Trump moved to pull the United States out of the WHO, which he had fiercely criticised over its response to the Covid pandemic.

AFP