Mongbwalu

Ituri, Mongbwalu's province, passed its Ebola peak in mid-August 2026. In the three weeks to 23 September it added 868 confirmed Bundibugyo cases and kept declining, WHO's bulletin said. North Kivu logged 567 over the same weeks, and MSF said on 2 October that it now supplies nearly 40% of new cases.

From Mongbwalu and two neighbouring Ituri zones in May, the epidemic had by then reached 63 health zones nationally. The failure first seen in Mongbwalu's hospital has followed the virus south. About a third of confirmed patients nationally sat outside Ebola wards on MSF's 2 October count, where they can infect the staff and patients around them, the pattern that killed four of Mongbwalu's health workers in May.

Mongbwalu was one of three health zones, with Bunia and Rwampara, where WHO confirmed active transmission when it declared an emergency on 17 May 2026. Local health authorities traced haemorrhagic-fever deaths in Ituri back to April, so the virus had spread unseen for weeks.

Four days later WHO put 96% of 831 recorded cases in those three zones. Four health workers had died at Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital within four days, and insecurity meant only 21% of named contacts were being followed up. Those four deaths in May showed the virus moving through Mongbwalu's wards before isolation was in place. Clinicians in Mongbwalu had only IV fluids and oral rehydration to offer, because no licensed vaccine or drug works against Bundibugyo.