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‘This is a fire’: DRC Ebola outbreak is fastest-growing ever, warns WHO
Infections of the Bundibugyo species of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have reached record highs and a majority of new cases are coming from “unknown chains of transmission”, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva after returning from Bunia in eastern DRC’s Ituri Province, at the heart of the outbreak, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said that with close to 2,000 confirmed cases and more than 700 deaths across five provinces as of 11 July, the current outbreak is the third-largest ever.
“We've seen the fastest growth in a single month since the outbreak started and of all the Ebola outbreaks that we have managed,” he said.
“Over the last few days, we've seen some of the highest numbers of new infections in a single day,” Dr Ihekweazu added, including over 80 cases confirmed in 24 hours.
Many of the newly reported deaths are people who died in their communities without ever reaching a health facility or receiving care – which is what the WHO official described as “the most alarming finding”.
Despite progress on diagnostics and high contact follow-up rates, “80 per cent of new cases are outside our contact lists and so are coming to us from unknown chains of transmission,” Dr Ihekweazu warned.
The current outbreak was declared two months ago almost to the day and WHO’s modelling indicates that its scale could be “at least two to four times” the number of reported cases.
“You have to imagine that this is a fire,” Dr Ihekweazu said. “There's something driving the fire in its heart, and it's also expanding at the same time.”
While up to 95 per cent of all new Ebola cases come from Ituri Province where the outbreak started, the virus has very recently spread to two new provinces, Haut-Uele and Tshopo.
The WHO official outlined a two-pronged strategy for the response: continue pushing at the heart of the outbreak in Ituri and at the same time, “understand the travel routes… and really map out where the risks are of new cases coming up”.
Urging the international community not to be “despondent” in the face of the disease’s rapid spread, the WHO official insisted that the work was bringing results.
“Now is not the time to drop the ball,” he warned.
Several therapeutics are undergoing clinical trials but there is no approved treatment for patients with the Bundibugyo species of Ebola yet. Still, chances of survival increase significantly with early supportive care.
“We must find the cases earlier, bring them into care as soon as possible” to reduce transmission in the community and avoid staying behind the curve, Dr Ihekweazu said.
Asked about recent attacks on healthcare workers and facilities he explained that the solution lies in “being open and transparent” about the care being provided.
“Before any new centre is opened, we invite leaders of the community to see what is being done” and to speak with the health care providers who have left their homes to support the response, he said.
Preventing attacks on healthcare relies on building community confidence in the new facilities and showing people that “they're not going to be left alone - they'll not only be treated, they'll be offered food, they'll have access to their families”.
As the struggle continues to stop the spread of Ebola in DRC, Dr Ihekweazu spoke of “dissonance between the threats facing us and the efforts that we're making to respond.”
“We need the world to come together, not just out of charity or out of support for the DRC, but in our own enlightened best interest. The more we do right now, the better placed we will be in the future,” he concluded.
The WHO official mentioned that at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Member States are negotiating a key part of the WHO Pandemic Agreement, the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) annexe, which aims to ensure that genetic information on dangerous pathogens with pandemic potential is rapidly shared and vaccines and treatments are made available to developing countries.
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STORY Ebola DRC update - WHO
TRT: 4:11’’
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: CREDIT WHO BROLL
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/NATS
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
DATELINE: 14 JULY 2026 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND AND 03 JULY 2026, EBOLA TREATMENT CENTRE (ETC) AT THE EVANGELICAL MEDICAL CENTRE, BUNIA, ITURI PROVINCE, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
1. Exterior wide shot: Palais des Nations, Flag Alley.
2. Medium shot: Speakers at the podium of the press conference.
3. SOUNDBITE (English) – Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO): “As of July the 11th, we had seen close to 2,000 cases, confirmed cases, and over 700 deaths across the five provinces now. This is now the third-largest Ebola outbreak ever, and we've seen the fastest growth in a single month since the outbreak started and of all the Ebola outbreaks that we have managed.”
4. Medium reverse shot: Speakers at the podium of the press conference; speaker on screens.
5. SOUNDBITE (English) – Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO): “Over the last few days, we've seen some of the highest numbers of new infections in a single day. A few days ago, we saw over 80 cases confirmed in a single day.”
6. Wide reverse shot: Speakers at the podium of the press conference; speaker on screens; journalists in the Press room.
7. SOUNDBITE (English) – Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO): “Perhaps the most alarming finding is that many of the newly reported deaths are people who died in their communities without ever reaching a health facility and without receiving care. And as of today, 80 per cent of new cases are outside our contact lists and so are coming to us from unknown chains of transmission.”
8. Wide shot: Speaker on screens; journalists in the Press room.
9. SOUNDBITE (English) – Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO): “You have to imagine that this is a fire. There's something driving the fire in its heart, and it's also expanding at the same time. So we have two new provinces, Haut-Uele and Tshopo, where Kisangani is, that have just reported new cases.”
10. Medium shot: Speaker on screens; journalists in the Press room.
11. SOUNDBITE (English) – Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO): “We must find the cases earlier, bring them into care as soon as possible so that they, so that we reduce transmission in the community. The more cases stay in the community, the more they transmit, the more we stay behind the curve.”
12. Medium reverse shot: Speakers at the podium of the press conference; speaker on screen.
13. SOUNDBITE (English) – Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO): “The more we can show the community, the care, the facilities, the context, the efforts being made, the fact that they're not going to be left alone, they'll not only be treated, they'll be offered food, they'll have access to their families, the more they have confidence in the facilities being set up, the fewer attacks we are seeing on health in the area.”
14. Various shots: Journalists in the Press room.
WHO BROLL – CREDIT WHO: 03 JULY 2026, EBOLA TREATMENT CENTRE (ETC) AT THE EVANGELICAL MEDICAL CENTRE, BUNIA, ITURI PROVINCE, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
15. Drone shot, Ebola treatment centre (NOSOUND)
16. Wide shot, Ebola treatment centre and health worker walking in PPE (NOSOUND)
17. Wide shot, health workers in PPE walking towards the shower area
18. Wide shot, health workers showering
19. Dolly shot, Red zone entrance
20. Various shots, field hospital extension to the Ebola treatment centre
21. Wide shot, an Ebola patient on a bed, seen through the clear plastic walls of the ETC extension
22. Various shots, medical devices and health workers examining a young Ebola patient
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New data showing that rivers were at their lowest level for decades last year provides further evidence that the climate crisis is real and countries must act immediately to protect themselves from the increasing threat to communities and livelihoods, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.
The key findings from WMO’s State of Global Water Resources 2025 report covering the hydrological cycle and extreme events in the five-year period to last year:
- 2025 was one of driest years for river discharge in 35 years
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- Water storage on Earth’s land surface has decreased in past decade
- Widespread glacier loss across all regions for fourth consecutive year
- Asia and Africa are regions most affected by water-related disasters
- Water data availability has improved, but gaps remain in hard-hit areas
Highlighting the long-term decline in the Earth’s freshwater storage and glacier melt, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo explained that the planet’s water reserves used to act as a planetary “savings account” that absorbed the occasional dry season, avoiding a water crisis. “One of the central stories of the 2025 report is what is happening to that savings account? And the simple answer is that we are depleting it,” she told journalists in Geneva.
Groundwater reserves are equally stretched and have been in decline since 2014, WMO’s report states, with nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showing levels lower than the historical norm and indicating a shift “further toward deficit…not recovery”.
“At the same time, we are seeing more water-related disasters,” Ms. Saulo said, while also stressing that the currently strengthening El Niño “will increase the risk of drought in some areas, and flooding in others”.
Glaciers disappearing
In 2025, for the fourth consecutive year, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass, leading to short-term hazards including floods and long-term water insecurity, according to WMO.
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“You asked if it could happen again? Absolutely; the problem in this region is that there’s 63,700 glaciers at the last count,” she told a Press Conference in Geneva. “Even if you’re looking with remote sensing with satellites at these glaciers, you might see some faults, you might see some slight shifting, that does not mean necessarily catastrophic collapse. So, in order to plan for this, it’s very, very difficult. But the international community is looking very hard at ways in which we can bring people together to solve some of these monitoring issues.”
Data indicates that glaciers shrank between 2023 and 2025 with cumulative losses of 1,400 gigatonnes of water – or about one third of annual fresh water needs.
Every major glacier region on Earth lost ice for the fourth consecutive year.
“All 19 glacier regions around the globe lost ice; in Central Asia, Iceland, the Russian Arctic and western Canada and the United States, it was among the three worst years on record,” said Wayne Jenkinson, WMO’s Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere.
Some regions with smaller glaciers such as Central Europe, the Caucasus, the western Canada and the United States may already have reached “peak water”, Mr. Jenkinson warned.
“After this point, the glacier gives less meltwater each year simply because there is less ice left to melt. That matters for every community downstream that relies on water during hot, dry summers,” he explained.
Narelle van der Wel, WMO’s Head of Cryosphere Monitoring, Predictions and Services, stressed that while some further glacier loss is unavoidable, the eventual scale of the decline is not predetermined.
“Some glacier loss is inevitable, but total loss of glaciers is not yet inevitable,” she said, pointing to emissions reductions as central to limiting future losses.
Preparing for moving baselines
The report does not attribute every observed change to climate change alone. WMO says pressure on water resources and natural variability also contribute.
Mr. Jenkinson said governments need to prepare for “moving baselines” as historical patterns become less reliable.
“The situation 30 years ago is not where we are today,” he said. Countries, he added, need to prepare “for those changes that have really already arrived”.
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