Last Ebola Patients Leave Mongbwalu Centre as Staff Dance in Ituri

Health workers sang and danced at an Ebola treatment centre in Mongbwalu, in Ituri province, this week as the last two patients walked out recovered.

The centre is run by Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF. For the first time since the Democratic Republic of Congo declared the outbreak on May 15, 2026, the facility has no confirmed Ebola cases under treatment, Africanews and France 24 reported. Video of the discharge spread widely online. World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus shared the moment and gave the warning that goes with it. "The outbreak is far from over, but every life saved is worth celebrating," he said.

The outbreak behind the celebration

The wider numbers stay grim. Congo's health ministry data put confirmed cases above 10,000 this week, at 10,060, and nearly half of those patients have died, the Associated Press reported on October 27. At least 2,600 patients have recovered. The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment. It has spread to 66 health zones across eight provinces, from three zones when it was declared in May.

Responders told the AP that some treatment centres are overwhelmed, that trust is still fragile, and that health workers have struck in places over bonuses unpaid since late August. On Saturday, October 24, a nurse was killed and another health worker badly injured while answering an Ebola alert in Bafwasende, in Tshopo province.

Why one empty ward matters

Mongbwalu is where this outbreak was first identified, so an empty ward there carries weight beyond one town. Recoveries change behaviour. When the first patients from the centre went home well, more sick people came forward for care, doctors working in Ituri have said in earlier reporting on the response. An empty centre is not an ending. It is proof, in the place where the outbreak began, that patients who come in can walk out.

Health teams still have to find cases faster. The AP reported that 80 percent of new cases in Congo are people who were not on monitored contact lists, which means the virus is still moving through communities before responders know about it. Ituri province remains the centre of the national response.