Medical charity warns funds for DR Congo Ebola fight not reaching front

Six months into Congo's Ebola outbreak, the virus is still spreading out of control and large sums of international aid are not reaching the front line, French medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on ‌Thursday. Issued on: 12/11/2026 - 10:32 2 min Reading time The current outbreak of Ebola was first detected in the DRC's conflict-plagued Ituri province in mid-May. It has since killed more than 5,300 people out of more than 11,000 confirmed cases. Medical charity MSF warned Thursday that the outbreak, the country's worst, "remains out of control". It urged more "transparency and accountability" from the Congolese state over the "persistant" gap between resources and action. "A troubling disconnect between the considerable resources mobilised for the response and what is actually reaching patients, frontline workers, and communities continues," MSF said in a statement. Ambulances without fuel Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the international community, "many frontline responders are left trying to contain the outbreak with empty hands and empty pockets," said Javid Abdelmoneim, MSF's international president. "Our teams are often left speechless by the dysfunctions they witness in many areas. Six months into the response, this situation is simply unacceptable." MSF cited cases of healthcare workers not being paid or trained, ambulances left to run without fuel, a lack of supplies or support for frontline employees and Ebola monitoring "surveillance teams that exist on paper but are nowhere to be seen on the ground". The charity also warned that some parts of the vast central African nation were seeing an "excessive concentration of efforts... at the expense of other hotspots where needs are increasingly urgent". These inadequacies have made some hospitals into "new centres of transmission, rather than places of care", MSF warned. Inside Bunia’s fight to protect families from DRC’s deadliest Ebola outbreak 'Problematic' virus surveillance system In one part of the eastern province of North Kivu, "close to three-quarters of Ebola patients contracted the disease in a health facility". The charity also criticised a "deeply problematic" virus surveillance system. While it acknowledged that "community mistrust makes surveillance difficult", given the long absence of the Congolese state from many of the hotspots, "urgent improvements in oversight, staffing, and operational support are essential". The latest outbreak of Ebola, which is transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids, has also spread across the DRC's borders to Uganda, Kenya and as far afield as Nigeria. The current epidemic is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which no approved vaccine or treatment is currently available. Development of a virus-specific vaccine is underway but could take months. MSF has called for people at risk to be given broader access to the ERVEBO® vaccine, saying it's the only one currently available at scale. “For MSF, the absence of a Bundibugyo-specific vaccine should not prevent the use of the only vaccine currently available,” sais Guyguy Manangama, epidemiologist and deputy director of operations at MSF. “Every month spent waiting for dedicated tools leaves healthcare workers, frontline responders, contacts of confirmed cases, and affected communities exposed to a potentially deadly disease.” (with newswires)