Reverend Bisoke Balikenga, a pastor in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), described the city’s Ebola wards as “overwhelmed beyond capacity” in an interview with CBN News on Thursday. The latest outbreak—now the country’s 12th since 1976—has infected at least 1,400 people and killed 900 in the DRC alone, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), with Bunia emerging as one of the hardest-hit urban centers in the latest surge. Health officials confirmed this week that the virus has spread to three additional health zones in Ituri, including Djugu and Mambasa, areas where previous containment efforts had been declared successful.
Balikenga, who has led relief efforts in Bunia since the outbreak was declared in August, said the collapse of trust in health workers—fueled by misinformation and past failures—has left communities refusing treatment. “People are dying in their homes now because they won’t go to the centers,” he said. “They believe the rumors that Ebola is a government plot or that the vaccines are poison.” The WHO has documented at least 27 cases of suspected vaccine-related violence in North Kivu and Ituri since January, including attacks on Ebola treatment centers and the killing of health workers. In Bunia alone, three medical staff have been killed in the past month, according to the DRC’s Ministry of Health.
The outbreak’s persistence in Bunia is tied to the city’s role as a transportation hub, with daily markets drawing traders from across eastern DRC and neighboring South Sudan and Uganda. A single infected traveler can now spread the virus to multiple regions before symptoms appear, complicating containment. The DRC’s health ministry reported this week that 47% of new cases in Ituri are now linked to community transmission rather than known contacts—a shift that has forced the WHO to reclassify the outbreak as “high risk of regional spread.” The agency’s emergency committee met in Geneva on Tuesday and concluded that the situation “no longer meets the criteria for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC),” but warned that the risk to neighboring countries remains “very high.”
International aid groups have struggled to scale operations in Bunia due to security threats and logistical challenges. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced this week that it had suspended vaccination campaigns in two health zones after armed groups blocked access to remote villages. The United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator for the DRC, Adam Abdelmoula, told reporters in Goma on Friday that “the response is being hindered by both the virus and the conflict.” The Ituri region has seen a resurgence of ethnic violence since 2021, with the UN documenting at least 1,200 deaths from communal clashes in the past year. In Bunia, hospitals are treating both Ebola patients and victims of gunfire wounds, with doctors reporting that triage decisions now depend on which condition is more immediately lethal.
The DRC’s government has deployed additional troops to Bunia to escort aid convoys, but local leaders say the military presence has done little to ease tensions. Balikenga cited the example of a recent mass burial in a village outside the city, where residents dug a communal grave after refusing to allow health workers to examine the bodies. “They fear the government will take their dead,” he said. The WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, acknowledged in a statement that “stigma and fear are as deadly as the virus itself.” She added that the organization was accelerating community engagement programs, including the deployment of local religious leaders like Balikenga to counter misinformation.
Meanwhile, the DRC’s health ministry has faced criticism for its gradual response in Bunia. A leaked internal report from the ministry, obtained by Jeune Afrique, revealed that warning signs of the outbreak’s resurgence in Ituri were ignored for nearly two weeks after the first cases were reported in early September. The report attributed the delay to “coordination failures” between provincial and national health teams. The WHO’s country representative in the DRC, Dr. Michel Yao, declined to comment on the report but confirmed that “operational gaps” in Bunia’s surveillance system had allowed the virus to spread undetected in high-risk areas.
The next critical test for containment will come on October 15, when the DRC’s health ministry and WHO are scheduled to review the outbreak’s trajectory in Ituri. If current trends persist—with daily new cases exceeding 50 and no signs of declining transmission—the review could trigger a reassessment of the global risk level. For now, Balikenga remains focused on the immediate crisis in Bunia, where he said the city’s 1.2 million residents are “waiting for a miracle.” “We need more than prayers,” he said. “We need vaccines, security, and honesty from those in charge.”
