Nearly 10,000 Congolese Infected With Ebola as Rwanda's Army Fights Inside Congo

Let us say the number out loud, because the world keeps failing to. As of 24 October 2026, the Democratic Republic of Congo had confirmed 9,964 cases of Bundibugyo virus disease. Four thousand, eight hundred and forty-one of those people are dead. These are not statistics. They are mothers, teachers, farmers, and children who went to bed sick and never woke up, many of them in places where the nearest working clinic is a day's walk away.

Look at what happened in only six days. Between 18 and 24 October, the outbreak added 412 confirmed cases and 239 deaths. Ituri alone accounts for 72 per cent of all cumulative cases. On the day the latest figures were recorded, 88 new infections were confirmed: 44 in Ituri, 39 in North Kivu, and 5 in Haut-Uélé. Sixty-six health zones across eight provinces have now recorded at least one confirmed case. This is not a localized emergency. It is a national one, and it is spreading through a country that has been bleeding for thirty years.

Here is the part that should make every African leader ashamed. Public health officials can only stop a virus like this by finding the people it touches. Contact tracing has to reach 95 per cent to have a fighting chance. On 24 October, Congo reached 87.1 per cent. That sounds close until you read the next figure: 4,855 contacts had not been seen. Those are 4,855 people walking around with a potentially lethal virus, unmonitored, because no one could reach them. Laboratory testing tells the same story. Of 512 samples tested that day, 17.2 per cent came back positive. A positivity rate that high means the outbreak is running ahead of the response, not behind it.

And the health workers, the people standing between the virus and the rest of us, are being infected. A total of 269 frontline workers have been affected since the outbreak began, 180 of them in Ituri and 45 in North Kivu. Think about what that means. Nurses who have no adequate protective equipment are catching the disease, going home sick, and leaving clinics unstaffed. Each one who falls is a gap in the wall.

Now ask the question the official reports politely avoid. Why is North Kivu, a province where the M23 armed group has held Goma and large parts of the territory since early 2025, one of the two epicentres of this outbreak? The UN Group of Experts has documented the presence of Rwandan Defence Force units inside Congolese territory, fighting alongside M23 in an operation that the Group has described as direct Rwandan support to the rebellion. Kigali calls it something else. We call it what the evidence says it is: a cross-border war of aggression, with Rwanda as the invader and M23 as its instrument. When a war takes over a province, the first casualties are not only the soldiers. The clinics close. The supply trucks stop. The health officials flee or are killed. The people who should be tracing contacts are hiding from artillery. A virus does not need a war to kill, but a war gives it everything it needs to spread.

The regional picture is now spreading too. Nigeria confirmed its first imported Bundibugyo case in Abuja on 20 October, making it the fifth country to report a case since the outbreak was declared in Congo. Health authorities identified 53 contacts and are following them. A suspected case in Rivers State tested negative, which is good news, but it should not lull anyone to sleep. In Kenya, confirmed cases rose from seven to nine, including one death. Officials say all the secondary cases trace back to the imported index case, and no transmission outside that cluster has been reported. That is a fact worth holding onto, and also a warning: every new border crossing is a test, and we are failing it more often than we are passing.

Here is what makes this so painful. Africa has beaten Ebola before, and the lessons are not secret. In 2014, Nigeria contained an Ebola outbreak in a city of over 20 million people through rapid contact tracing, fast isolation of cases, and a government that treated the emergency as a national priority rather than a press conference opportunity. Senegal stopped its single imported case dead in its tracks that same year. Both countries had functioning state institutions, transparent reporting, and public health officers who were paid, equipped, and trusted. Congo has none of those luxuries in the east, and the reason is not a mystery. It is the price of a war that its neighbour refuses to end.

So what must happen now? First, Rwanda must withdraw its forces from Congolese territory and stop arming, funding, and directing M23. No vaccine, no test kit, and no contact tracer can work in a province where the state has been dismantled by a foreign army. Second, the African Union must stop issuing statements and start enforcing its own principle of respect for territorial integrity. The AU was founded on the promise that African borders would not be redrawn by force. It should be ashamed that it has watched this one for years. Third, the UN Security Council must impose targeted sanctions on the commanders and officials directing this war, and it must make humanitarian access to outbreak zones a non-negotiable condition of any ceasefire. Fourth, Africa CDC and the WHO must fund the response properly, including protective equipment, hazard pay, and transport for health workers, because a nurse who is not paid and not protected will not stay at her post.

Congo's own government also owes its people a straight answer. Publish the contact-tracing data by health zone, every week, without delay. Protect the health workers who are dying for the country. Invest in community trust, because no one hands over a sick relative to a team they fear, and communities will only cooperate with responders they believe are honest. And the private sector, from the mining companies extracting Congo's minerals to the telecom firms with towers across the east, should fund mobile reporting systems and logistics that keep the response moving.

Then there is you. If you live in Kinshasa, Nairobi, Lagos, or Johannesburg, you can demand that your government raise Congo's crisis in every regional forum it attends. You can ask your MP why your country has not pressed the AU to act. You can refuse to let your media treat this as a distant tragedy. This is our continent, our people, and our problem, whether the headlines say so or not.

Nearly 10,000 people. Nearly 5,000 dead. Four thousand, eight hundred and fifty-five contacts who have not been found. And a war next door that no one has the courage to stop. We have seen what African institutions can do when they are serious. The only question left is whether we will be serious before the next number arrives.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB