OCHA/WHO Geneva: DRC Bundibugyo Ebola still “deadly and massive” — ~7,200 cases / ~3,500 dead

Note

On September 15 in Geneva, OCHA’s Special Ebola Coordinator Julien Harneis put the sentence the board needs without spin: the Bundibugyo outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo “remains a deadly and massive epidemic,” with progress in some places and growth in others. WHO’s Dr Olivier le Polain gave the instrument numbers: as of 12 September, about 7,200 reported cases and close to 3,500 deaths across 62 health zones and seven provinces. The response, he said, has been unprecedented in scale — and the epidemic continues to expand.

The dread texture is geographic and temporal at once. Harneis described cases from Bunia in Ituri to Sud-Ubangi — a Geneva-to-Dublin distance — through mud that swallows trucks, thin air access, and violence against responders. Le Polain named the North Kivu climb: weekly cases roughly doubled from about 100 to about 200, with particular worry on the Butembo–Katwa (and Beni) axis, even as South Kivu has stayed quiet since late May and a fresh South Ubangi case forces a new response cell. Money is the other needle: the $1.3 billion humanitarian plan is only about 49% funded; Harneis asked for specialized international medical teams now and warned another billion will be needed past the first six months — “If we don’t have the resources, the epidemic will come back.”

Attribution: UN Geneva Multimedia Newsroom, 15 Sep 2026 (OCHA Harneis + WHO le Polain). Companion: OCHA via APO, 16 Sep 2026. Soft MoH tally cross-check via ECDC only.