The fastest growing Ebola outbreak is worsening hunger in eastern Congo,
a UN agency chief warns
[July 30, 2026]
By CONSTANT SAME BAGALWA, PROSPER HERI NGORORA and EDITH M.
LEDERER
BUNIA, Congo (AP) — The fastest growing Ebola outbreak ever recorded is
leaving thousands more people hungry in eastern Congo, a region engulfed
in conflicts and a fight over precious minerals, the head of the U.N.
food agency warned on Wednesday.
The World Food Program's acting executive director, Carl Skau, told The
Associated Press during a visit to the hard-hit Ituri province that the
outbreak is a “crisis on top of a crisis” that has compounded a
catastrophic situation with over 5 million Congolese already
experiencing emergency-level food insecurity.
The long-running conflict in eastern Congo has driven nearly 10 million
people into crisis or emergency levels of hunger, with Ituri — the
epicenter of the Ebola outbreak — among the most affected with 1.9
million in need of food, according to the WFP.
“My number one message is that this situation requires much, much more
attention,” Skau later told a video news conference with U.N.
correspondents. “This is the fastest growing Ebola crisis ever.”
Ebola's impact is spiraling
Since the outbreak was declared on May 15, it took just over two months
for 1,000 people to die of Ebola in eastern Congo, compared to the
2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa that had been considered the worst in
history and when it took about eight months to reach that number.
The dramatic surge shows the urgent need to scale up food, protective
equipment, trained staff and funding, Skau said, stressing that the lack
of money has forced WFP to cut the number of people it is assisting in
Congo from 3 million last year to 1 million this year.
U.N. senior Ebola coordinator Julien Harneis, who was with Skau on the
visit to Ituri, said the $2.1 billion humanitarian appeal for Congo is
only 45% funded.
The separate Ebola response appeal is being revised upward because it
only covered two provinces and now there are four, he said.
The outbreak has been particularly difficult to fight because the
Bundibugyo virus responsible for it has no approved vaccines or
treatments, unlike most of Congo’s past outbreaks. Harneis said a
vaccine trial is underway, but getting a vaccine to Congo is months
away.
The United Nations is working with the government and community workers
to build trust so that people with symptoms will seek treatment quickly,
Harneis said. If they do, he added, “they have a very good chance of
surviving Ebola.”
Ebola drives up malnutrition in affected communities
Across some 48 health zones affected with Ebola, WFP said more than 2.7
million people face acute food insecurity, including 628,000 in
emergency conditions.
[to top of second column]
|
Carl Skau, acting executive director of the World Food Programme,
pepares a container of food at the Rwampara Ebola treatment center
in Ituri, eastern Congo, Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne
Dirole)
 “Now with the Ebola crisis, this is
getting worse. Markets are impacted, supply routes are impacted and
so people are struggling even more to have enough to eat,” Skau told
the AP, and malnutrition is rising.
Since it erupted, the ongoing Ebola outbreak has recorded 3,360
confirmed cases, including 1,487 deaths. Harneis said that in the
last 24 hours, 50 people died of Ebola.
Measures introduced to slow the spread — including border closures
and restriction of movements and large gatherings — have disrupted
life and businesses, driving up food and fuel prices, the WFP has
said. The agency said it has so far delivered more than 160,000 hot
meals to patients, contacts and front line workers in 17 treatment
and isolation centers.
In Mongbwalu, a mining town about 69 kilometers (43 miles) from
Bunia, Ituri's provincial capital, residents said Ebola and the
measures introduced to fight it have made it difficult for some
families to feed their children.
Kahambu Deborah, a 40-year-old mother of six, said she had been
struggling to access her farmland due to rebel violence, and that
the restrictions linked to Ebola had made things more challenging.
“Sometimes, because of the insecurity, we can’t even go to our
fields, and our children are suffering as a result,” she said.
Health workers seek to limit the movement of people
Dr. Richard Lokudu, director-general of the Mongbwalu General
Hospital, said health workers are seeing more malnutrition cases in
the region, compared to before the outbreak, “even at the Ebola
treatment center.”
In Mongbwalu, the U.N. agency’s food support program has helped to
“limit the movement of people seeking the means to survive,” said
Tourne Kasereka, a monitoring assistant with the WFP.
A critical aspect of that response is getting food to those in need
of it, according to Skau.
“The World Food Program needs resources (and) donors to step up so
that we can do more, to alleviate the pressures on the people here
in Ituri,” he said.
___
Lederer reported from the United Nations. Associated Press writer
Wilson McMakin in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
