South African President Cyril Ramaphosa travelled to Kinshasa this week to stand in solidarity with the Democratic Republic of Congo as the country battles an Ebola outbreak that has now claimed 438 lives among 1,406 confirmed cases, a fatality rate of just over 31 percent since the outbreak was declared on 15 May. The visit came as alarming new developments signalled that the virus is spreading beyond its original epicentre in ways that are testing the limits of the response.
The most concerning development is the confirmation of a case in Kisangani, a northeastern city of 1.5 million residents and the capital of Tshopo province, located nearly 600 kilometres from the outbreak’s centre in Ituri province. A test carried out on the body of a 24-year-old pregnant woman returned a positive result for Ebola. Health authorities revealed that the deceased’s body had been secretly transported by motorcycle from the health zone of Nia Nia in Ituri to Kisangani, a detail that underscores one of the most persistent and dangerous challenges of this outbreak: the movement of infected individuals and their remains before authorities can intervene. The body of an Ebola victim remains highly infectious, and the virus has repeatedly been transmitted through burial rites involving direct contact with the deceased.
The outbreak remains most intense in Ituri province, where more than 83 percent of all deaths have occurred. The province borders both South Sudan and Uganda, and Uganda has now reported 20 cases including two deaths. The virus has also spread to the neighbouring provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu. In Haut-Uele province, which lies adjacent to Ituri, a death and a confirmed case were reported at the start of the week. Health authorities noted that the infected person in that instance was described as being on the run from the Nia Nia health zone, a detail that speaks to the profound difficulty of maintaining contact tracing in an environment where movement is driven by fear and distrust. Authorities maintain that only three provinces are formally affected, classifying the cases in Tshopo and Haut-Uele as imported from Ituri, but several contact cases have already been identified in both provinces.
At a press conference in Kinshasa following Ramaphosa’s visit, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi captured the broader challenge in a single phrase. “Epidemics do not recognise borders,” he said. The observation is not rhetorical. It reflects the lived reality of an outbreak that began in one province and has now touched at least five, crossed into a neighbouring country, and reached one of the region’s most populous cities through the clandestine movement of a single body on a motorcycle.
Ramaphosa’s message at the same press conference was directed not at the virus but at the international community. He called on the world to “not lock out the DRC” by imposing travel bans, expressing optimism that the outbreak could be contained and warning that isolation would only make the response harder. He went further, expressing hope that a vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, the variant behind the current outbreak, could be developed by the end of the year. No vaccine or specific treatment for this strain currently exists, though a clinical trial of potential treatments, including the monoclonal antibody MBP134 and the antiviral drug remdesivir, has been launched by the World Health Organization. Results from that trial, however, could take months to emerge.
The scale of the current crisis is worth placing in context. Ebola has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years. The DRC has experienced 17 outbreaks of the disease, more than any other country in the world. The deadliest, between 2018 and 2020, killed nearly 2,300 people. The current outbreak, already responsible for 438 confirmed deaths and still spreading, is being described as one of the worst in terms of early trajectory. Health officials continue to acknowledge that the true scale of the outbreak remains difficult to assess, given the access challenges created by ongoing conflict in the region and the mistrust between some communities and health authorities.
Ramaphosa’s visit to Kinshasa was a diplomatic gesture of genuine significance. It placed Africa’s most industrially powerful nation visibly alongside one of its most burdened, at a moment when Congo needs international solidarity more than condemnation. The message he delivered, that the DRC must not be isolated, that containment requires engagement rather than exclusion, is one that the international community would do well to heed. An Ebola outbreak that spreads unchecked in central Africa does not stay in central Africa. That lesson has been learned before. It should not need to be learned again.
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