Ebola spreads beyond Congo epicentre, overwhelming treatment capacity

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, an Ebola outbreak that began in Ituri province has spread its roots into surrounding regions, revealing the fragility of systems asked to hold back a virus that kills nearly half of those it reaches. By mid-August 2026, more than five thousand confirmed cases and nearly twenty-five hundred deaths had been recorded across fifty-six health districts — not as a contained catastrophe, but as an expanding one, with the newest zones of infection growing at twice the pace of the original epicenter. What unfolds here is a familiar human story: the gap between the s