Armed Groups in DRC Are Repeating the 2018-2020 Outbreak's Deadliest Pattern

Armed groups in eastern DRC are blocking health teams from contact tracing and safe burials during the current Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak—the same constraint that transformed the 2018-2020 Kivu outbreak into the second-largest Ebola epidemic on record. Insecurity fractures contact networks, hampers specimen transport, and displaces populations, seeding cases across new areas. The proven Zaire-strain vaccine used in 2018 does not work against Bundibugyo, leaving vaccination in earlier clinical stages.