![Ebola & Environment: Look the Forests, [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css="" bb_tab_container=""]
From the Blue Community Environmental Defenders Uga](https://blue-community.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/WHOruftwegenEbola-AusbruchsinternationalenAlarmaus-3129338875-864x467.jpg "Ebola & Environment: Look the Forests 1")
From the Blue Community Environmental Defenders, Uganda/DR Congo:
Ebola is back in Ituri, DRC. And the forest is trying to tell us something.
On 15 May, the DRC declared its 17th Ebola outbreak since the virus was first identified in 1976. Two days later, the World Health Organization declared it a public health emergency of international concern.
The type is Bundibugyo, which is a rare type without a licensed vaccine. No specific therapy according to the WHO report.
As of 16 May, official figures stand at 8 laboratory-confirmed cases, 246 suspected cases, and 80 suspected deaths across three health zones in Ituri: Bunia, Rwampara, and Mongbwalu. A 59-year-old Congolese man who crossed into Uganda for care died in Kampala on 14 May.
At Environmental Defenders (ED), this outbreak is unfolding inside the same territories where we work every day, such as Mongbwalu, Mambasa, Bunia, Niania, Djugu, Aru, Irumu, and Mahagi. Communities are already carrying armed conflict, mass displacement, and the recent collapse of humanitarian funding from USAID, Oxfam, Tearfund, IOM, and others. Now it’s Ebola.
We are not a medical organization. We are an environmental justice organization. And we are asking the world to look at where this virus is actually coming from.
Bundibugyo virus was first identified in 2007 in Bundibugyo District, western Uganda, a landscape roughly 60 percent covered by the Rwenzori Mountains and Semliki National Park, with a broad range of wildlife, including primates, where hunting of wild animals is common among settlements near the national park. The second outbreak hit Isiro, DRC, in 2012, with 57 cases and 29 deaths. The current epicenter, Mongbwalu, is a high-traffic mining area carved into the Ituri rainforest. The pattern is unmistakable.
When forests are torn open by gold mining, logging, and conflict economies, wildlife is pushed into the laps of people. Bushmeat, including primates and pangolins, becomes the bridge. Pathogens that lived quietly for generations spill over into mining camps, displacement sites, and rural clinics that have no oxygen, no isolation wards, and increasingly, no donors.
Our response starts with what we know how to do. Through our Community Media program, Radio Terra FM and our partner stations are broadcasting WHO- and Ministry of Health-approved messages in five local languages. Our studio is producing audio and visual materials so that accurate, life-saving information moves faster than rumor.
But broadcasting is not enough. Protecting communities from the next spillover means protecting the forest. One Health is not a slogan. It is human, animal, and ecosystem health treated as one system because they already are one system.
Ituri is bleeding from conflict, gold mining, deforestation, and now Ebola at the same time. The indigenous and local communities we work with deserve more than a news cycle. They deserve solidarity that lasts.
