On May 17, 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Bundibugyo virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). It was the first time such a declaration was issued before the convening an Emergency Committee, a signal of how urgently the situation is being treated. WHO has assessed the risk as high at the national and regional levels, and low at the global level.
An outbreak like this raises questions in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and public health work about what helps and what doesn't. We wanted to share what's known so far, how the disease actually spreads, and where safe water and hygiene fit into the response.
What's happening
On May 5, WHO was alerted to a high-mortality illness in Mongbwalu Health Zone, Ituri Province, DRC, including deaths among health workers. Laboratory analysis at the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale in Kinshasa confirmed Bundibugyo virus, a species of Ebola, in samples from Rwampara Health Zone on May 15.
As of May 20, approximately 600 suspected cases and 139 deaths among suspected cases had been reported, with 51 confirmed cases in DRC and two imported cases in Uganda. Case fatality rates in past Bundibugyo outbreaks have ranged from 30 to 50 percent. There is no licensed vaccine or specific therapeutic treatment for the virus, though early supportive care is lifesaving.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that the outbreak is occurring in areas affected by insecurity, population displacement, mining-related population movement, and frequent cross-border travel. These are all factors that complicate a response to any infectious disease.
How Ebola spreads
Ebola is not a waterborne disease. It is not foodborne, and it is not airborne. According to the CDC, a person becomes infected when broken skin or mucous membranes come into contact with the blood or body fluids of someone sick with or who has died from Ebola disease, or with objects contaminated by those fluids, including clothes, bedding, needles, and medical equipment. People are only contagious once they begin showing symptoms.
Because of this limited path for human-to-human spread, the R0 (pronounced R-naught, an epidemiological measurement of the transmissibility of a disease) for Ebola virus disease is below two. By comparison, the R0 for chickenpox is 10 to 12, and measles is between 12 and 18.
Drinking water is not a route of transmission for this disease.
Why water and hygiene still matter
What does prevent the spread of Ebola is clinical care, surveillance, contact tracing, safe burial practices, infection prevention and control, and community engagement. Water and hygiene support that work.
The joint WHO and UNICEF technical document, Ebola Virus Disease (EVD): Key questions and answers concerning water, sanitation and hygiene, first developed during the 2014 West Africa outbreak and updated in July 2021, is the standard reference. Its opening point is direct: provision of water and sanitation and good hygiene practices play an essential role in protecting human health during all disease outbreaks, including during Ebola outbreaks.
This is what that looks like in practice:
- Hand hygiene for health workers, patients, and the people around them. Reliable handwashing requires safe water.
- Cleaning and disinfection in treatment centers, healthcare facilities, and mortuary settings.
- Sanitation infrastructure that keeps treatment environments functioning under pressure.
- Hygiene supplies for households where someone has been exposed or is recovering.
UNICEF teams working through the DRC's 2018 outbreak noted that safe water is necessary to clean and disinfect healthcare centers and to allow people to wash their hands. Those are simple things, but they are also the behaviors that fall apart when a system is under strain.
The World Bank has noted that the DRC has faced 15 Ebola virus disease outbreaks in 40 years, and that the country's largest claimed almost 2,300 lives and cost twice the DRC's annual health budget. WASH in healthcare facilities is part of why those numbers were not higher.
How we think about this at LifeStraw
The work of stopping this outbreak belongs to the national health authorities in DRC and Uganda, working alongside colleagues at WHO, Africa CDC, and their local and NGO partners. The most useful thing we can do at LifeStraw is to be accurate about what's happening and to be clear about the limits of any one tool.
LifeStraw works in the space of WASH and public health. We know that the people most affected by an outbreak are often health workers, families (most commonly women and children) and the people around them already facing insecurity. We recognize that safe water and hygiene by themselves do not stop Ebola, but we know that they do support the people and systems who will stop the disease.
Where to go for accurate information
Infectious disease outbreaks are fast-moving, and information can be difficult to track. For anyone following the response, primary sources are the best place to start:
- WHO Disease Outbreak News: Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus, DRC and Uganda
- WHO PHEIC declaration, May 17, 2026
- WHO Director-General's media briefing remarks, May 20, 2026
- WHO fact sheet on Ebola disease
- WHO and UNICEF joint guidance: EVD Key questions and answers concerning WASH (2021)
- CDC Health Alert Network advisory (HAN 530)
- CDC: How Ebola Disease Spreads
- ECDC threat assessment
- UNICEF: Water, an indispensable ally in the fight against Ebola
Outbreak response is made up of many parts working in coordination - health care practitioners, their governments, international agencies, and the network of NGOs and nonprofits that work in health. Accurate information, trusted systems, and properly resourced responses all matter. Safe water and hygiene help that wider response work.
What we're doing
At LifeStraw, we have a trusted network of partner organizations that are gearing up to support the broader response effort. As we learn more about the scale of the outbreak and how far it has spread, we will be working with these organizations to ensure that their teams have access to the safe water they need to support their staff, the patients in their care, and all the work ahead of them. Our work is bolstered by support from contributions to the LifeStraw Safe Water Fund, which enables the work of safe water to go further.
100% of donated funds go toward the cost of products and distribution of supplies. Vestergaard Frandsen, Inc. (d/b/a “LifeStraw”) does not profit from your donation.
LifeStraw’s Safe Water Fund operates through a fiscal sponsorship with Players Philanthropy Fund, a Texas nonprofit corporation recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (Federal Tax ID: 27-6601178, ppf.org/pp). Contributions to LifeStraw’s Safe Water Fund qualify as tax-deductible.
