Madras Times - Deadly DR Congo Ebola outbreak spreads to M23-held South Kivu

Efforts to get a grip on the latest outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic disease, which the World Health Organization has declared an international emergency, have been hampered by the DRC's long-running conflicts, including between the Congolese army and the M23.

Having seized swathes of land in the mineral-rich east with Rwanda's help, the M23 has set up to govern for the long run in areas under its control, installing a parallel administration to the Congolese government.

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.

According to the M23 spokesman, tests "confirm a new positive case" from the South Kivu provincial capital Bukavu, which fell into M23 hands in February 2025.

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 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 the DRC's 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 -- but none to date in South Kivu and Tshopo.

Given the difficulties in accessing the areas hit by the epidemic, 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.

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".

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.

S.Pillai--MT