Health officials speaking to Reuters say Bundibugyo Ebola has reached North Ubangi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a province on the Central African Republic border that would become the eighth province touched by the outbreak if national authorities confirm the report. Two cases sit confirmed there, the officials said Thursday, though Congolese authorities had not yet announced them, TimesLIVE’s Reuters reprint and Bloomberg’s Moneyweb copy report. A North Ubangi health official told Reuters that a series of suspect deaths in a mining area in the Wapinda health zone, near the Bas-Uele border, prompted samples for provincial and Kinshasa laboratory analysis.
Case and death totals still move between outlets and dates. ECDC’s weekday page, last updated 15 October at 13:30, says that as of 13 October 2026 the DRC reported 9,144 confirmed cases and 4,410 related deaths from data up until 12 October, with 899 patients hospitalised in isolation, and that on 12 October authorities logged 79 new confirmed cases and 11 deaths from Ituri (40), North Kivu (27) and Haut-Uele (8). ECDC still counts seven provinces — Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uélé, Tshopo, Bas-Uélé and Sud Ubangi — and does not yet list North Ubangi. Xinhua cites the same 9,144 / 4,410 figures from Congolese authorities as of Oct. 12, with a 48.2% case fatality rate. Bloomberg points to a later government situation report: 9,212 confirmed cases and 4,441 deaths as of October 13, still listing seven provinces. Reuters summarises the outbreak as more than 9,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths. OCHA rounds to nearly 9,100 confirmed cases and more than 4,400 deaths. This desk treats the North Ubangi cases as developing until Kinshasa announces them.
On the child toll, MSF’s 15 October press release, drawing on Epicentre, its epidemiological research centre, says children face a higher risk of death from Ebola than adults and make up a large share of the current caseload. In North Kivu, 24% of confirmed cases involve children under five, compared with 13% in Ituri; infants under one account for 13% of North Kivu cases versus 6% in Ituri. At the Butembo Ebola treatment centre, MSF teams recorded 24 deaths among 30 children admitted between June and September 2026, most under five. Stéphanie Hoffmann, MSF project coordinator in Butembo, said most of those paediatric cases had already received care for other illnesses in several facilities before referral, and that their family members did not have Ebola, so infection inside healthcare facilities looked “highly likely.” MSF calls for stronger infection prevention in ordinary health centres, child-friendly formulations of investigational medicines, and inclusion of children in Bundibugyo vaccine and treatment studies. Doctors Without Borders USA carries the same release.
Alongside the spread and the child numbers, Africa CDC offers a mixed signal. Director-general Jean Kaseya said at a Kinshasa briefing that “For the past two weeks, we have seen the curve starting to decline,” while the epicentre shifted from Ituri toward North Kivu, Xinhua reports. Kaseya also stressed gaps in surveillance and contact tracing, said international pledges had reached $3.045 billion (up from $1.656 billion in June) with only $962.66 million — 31.6% — disbursed, and called for greater transparency in the use of the funds. Declared on May 15, the Bundibugyo outbreak ranks as the deadliest recorded in the DRC and the second-largest Ebola outbreak worldwide after West Africa in 2014–2016, Xinhua and ECDC both note.
Cross-border and security pressure continue. Reuters says the outbreak produced cases in Uganda, declared Ebola-free in August, and in Kenya, which announced its first infection earlier this month and a second case — a close family member of the first — on Wednesday. ECDC separately records earlier medical evacuations of healthcare workers to the Netherlands, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, and still assesses the risk of importation into the EU/EEA from outbreak areas as very low. OCHA says fighting in South Kivu and North Kivu recently displaced more than 26,000 people and that insecurity in Ituri’s Djugu Territory, including an attack near Pimbo that killed four civilians this week per local civil society, has disrupted humanitarian missions and the Ebola response along National Road 27.
Reading note: this desk wrote from outlet copies and the MSF press release, not field reporting. It did not read the Congolese Ministry of Health situation report as a primary PDF, Africa CDC’s own briefing transcript, or Kinshasa’s laboratory confirmations for North Ubangi. Reuters lines rest on TimesLIVE and Bloomberg/Moneyweb reprints; bloomberg.com and reuters.com pages did not load cleanly to this desk. Case counts, provincial lists and the unofficial North Ubangi cases may still move.
