EBOLA OUTBREAK IN WESTERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO REACHES 100 CASES
Disease
How the score is calculated
The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.
- Affected people
- 1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
- Deaths
- 1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
- Displaced people
- 1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
- Casualties
- 100 or more: +8
- Story wording
- +10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.
Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.
This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.
Historical record
Status: CLOSED · Imported 2026-10-07
Closed for this historical import at the site owner’s request; not a new assessment of current conditions.
Date note: Stored record date is 2016-02-25, but the retained report describes an outbreak declared on 1 June 2020. The stored date has not been independently verified.
In brief
- What happenedThe number of cases in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in western Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has reached 100, a near two-fold increase in a little over five weeks.
- How many affectedDeaths: 33
- What help is neededThere is a critical need for additional support.
What changed
First retained snapshot
No earlier verified snapshot is present in the recovered dataset. This record remains available as the historical baseline.
Situation
The number of cases in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in western Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has reached 100, a near two-fold increase in a little over five weeks. This latest outbreak, DRC’s 11th, was declared on 1 June 2020 in Equateur Province. A cluster of cases was initially detected in Mbandaka, the provincial capital. The outbreak has since spread to 11 of the province’s 17 health zones. Of the 100 cases reported so far, 96 are confirmed and four are probable. Forty-three people have lost their lives. The outbreak presents significant logistical challenges, with affected communities spanning large distances in remote and densely-forested areas of the province, which straddles the Equator. At its widest points, the outbreak is spread across approximately 300 km both from east to west and from north to south. It can take days to reach affected populations, with responders and supplies often having to traverse areas without roads, necessitating long periods of river boat travel. An Ebola outbreak occurred in the same province in May 2018 and was contained in less than three months with 54 cases and 33 deaths recorded. “With 100 Ebola cases in less than 100 days, the outbreak in Equateur Province is evolving in a concerning way,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa. “The virus is spreading across a wide and rugged terrain which requires costly interventions and with COVID-19 draining resources and attention, it is hard to scale-up operations.” The current response is underfunded, adding challenges to the existing logistical barriers. WHO initially provided US$ 1.7 million and subsequently supplemented this with another US$ 600 000 from its contingency fund for emergencies. The DRC Ministry of Health has presented an integrated plan to donors and partners for about US$ 40 million and has committed US$ 4 million. There is a critical need for additional support. “Without extra support the teams on the ground will find it harder to get ahead of the virus,” said Dr Moeti. “COVID-19 is not the only emergency needing robust support. As we know from our recent history we ignore Ebola at our peril.” The majority of the responders have been mobilized locally under the leadership of the DRC Government. There are currently 90 WHO experts on the ground, as well as experts from nearly 20 partner organizations supporting the response. Since the beginning of the outbreak, WHO has supported the ring vaccination of more than 22 600 people at high risk. Along with its partners, WHO helped to screen more than 640 000 people across 40 points of control that were set up to help keep travellers safe when crossing into an affected area. WHO has also worked to raise awareness about Ebola among nearly 774 000 people in the affected communities on how to recognize symptoms and seek treatment. Furthermore, WHO and partners are also ready to support the Ministry of Health in implementing preparedness and readiness activities in currently unaffected health zones of Equateur in a bid to
Linked charities and agencies
WorldsAid verification
A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against 1 attributed source, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. 1 human-impact figure was separated from the narrative and dated where the source allowed. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.
Verified figures
- Deaths
- 33 retained at 2016-02-25
What we knew when
- WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
- Last verification represented by this immutable snapshot.
Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.
Provenance
This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.
Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz
Verified
SHA-256 d989927f21ff77e5d47f54e78c7b6619ca0b2eb83dbea7051e8a54f966e13c39