Ebola outbreak: what you need to know

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]The WHO just declared the current Ebola outbreak a global health emergency.

[00:00:03][music] Here's what you need to know. As of today, there are more than 500 suspected cases. At least 331 people have died, and those numbers are rising fast. The cases are mostly spread across the Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of Kongo or the DRC. A suspected case has reached Kinshasa, the DRC's capital, over 1500 kilometers away, and two cases have also been confirmed in Uganda's capital of Kala.

[00:00:25]Ebola is a severe hemorrhagic fever.

[00:00:27]That means it causes damage to your circulatory system which can lead to unexplained bleeding otherwise known as hemorrhage. It has an average case fatality rate of about 50% which is very high but without treatment that fatality rate can reach 90%. That makes it one of the world's deadliest diseases and it's one we've worked really hard to contain.

[00:00:46]So why has this outbreak spiraled so far out of control so fast? There's a couple key reasons. One is that it's caused by a rare species of Ebola called bundi bujo. The most common species of Ebola virus is Zire. It's what was behind the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which killed over 11,000 people. Since that outbreak, scientists have developed some vaccines and treatments for Ebola, but only for the Zire species. They don't work for Bundi Bujo. This also applies to testing. The regional lab at the outbreak's epicenter only had testing equipment that could detect Ebola Zire. So, when people started getting sick, their samples tested negative for Ebola. They only tested positive when the samples made it to the national lab in Kinshasa, which could test for multiple species. That created a multi-week gap between when we think the first person got sick, and official laboratory confirmation of Ebola, during which the virus could spread undetected.

[00:01:39]The fact that cases have already appeared in two capital cities, one across a border, shows just how quickly and how far a missed outbreak can travel. Now, this declaration from the World Health Organization is an official designation called the PHEIC. That's a public health emergency of international concern. That does not mean that this Ebola outbreak poses a pandemic risk.

[00:02:01]Declaring a PHEIC is supposed to activate certain protocols. It unlocks international funding. It fasttracks research and response and it tells governments of the countries that are involved they need to take certain steps like establishing emergency operation centers and coordinating their outbreak response across borders. The WHO made this declaration because it wants to get this outbreak under control as fast as possible, which is going to be really hard for a few key reasons. The healthcare infrastructure in this area is already under stress from recent outbreaks of other diseases like EMPOX and malaria. This is also an area with ongoing conflict. Armed groups are continuing to carry out attacks through the Aturi province, even through the outbreak, which experts say has probably contributed to Ebola's spread. And all of this is happening as the WHO is cutting roughly a quarter of its global workforce, largely due to the United States withdrawing its membership and its funding from the WHO. All of these factors taken together means that some experts are now saying this Ebola outbreak has the potential to become the biggest in