WHO chief says suspected Ebola deaths at 220 and 'epidemic is outpacing us'

The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Monday that there had been 220 suspected deaths in the current Ebola outbreak and that a delay in detecting cases meant responders were now "playing catch-up".

"We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment the epidemic is outpacing us," Tedros said, adding that countries bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo - the epicentre of the outbreak - should take immediate action.

Earlier on Monday Uganda reported two more Ebola cases, taking its total number of confirmed cases to seven.

The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola a public health emergency of international concern.

Tedros said he would travel to Congo on Tuesday and that addressing the fast-moving outbreak was complicated by the fact that Congo's Ituri and North Kivu provinces were highly insecure and there were no approved vaccines for Bundibugyo virus.

(Reporting by Vincent Mumo Nzilani and Sfundo Parakozov;Editing by Alexander Winning)

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This story was originally published May 25, 2026 at 7:15 AM.