Last Ebola Patient in DR Congo Released, WHO Says Outbreak Nearing Its End

The final Ebola patient in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been discharged from a treatment centre in Kasai province, marking a major step toward declaring the country’s latest outbreak over, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Sunday.

The patient, the 19th to recover, was treated in Bulape, where health workers cheered as she left the facility. The outbreak, first declared on September 4, has seen a total of 64 cases, including 45 deaths, according to WHO data.

“If no new cases are detected in the next 42 days, the outbreak will be declared over,” the agency said in its statement.

Mohamed Janabi, WHO’s regional director for Africa, called the recovery “a remarkable achievement,” crediting the DRC’s rapid and coordinated response.

“The country’s robust response, with support from WHO and partners, was pivotal to this achievement,” he wrote on social media.

The Kasai outbreak, the 16th recorded in the DRC, emerged in the Bulape and Mweka areas of the province’s southwest. While the remote location made response efforts difficult, it also helped contain the virus’s spread.

To combat the outbreak, WHO and local authorities deployed medical teams and established a 32-bed treatment centre—Kasai’s first to operate outside a training exercise. More than 35,000 people have been vaccinated in and around Bulape since September, the organisation said. No new cases have been recorded since September 25.

Ebola was first identified in 1976 in what is now the DRC. Without treatment, fatality rates can reach up to 90 percent, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The world’s worst Ebola epidemic occurred in West Africa between 2014 and 2016, killing more than 11,000 people.

The DRC’s last outbreak, in 2022, involved only one confirmed case. If the current one is officially declared over in mid-November, it will mark another success in the country’s long battle against one of the world’s deadliest viral diseases.