Five patients have recovered from a rare type of Ebola, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Sunday (May 31, 2026) during a visit to eastern Congo’s Bunia, a city at the heart of an outbreak.

“Four people will be discharged today and there was one that was discharged the day before yesterday,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during the opening of a new Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, the provinical capital of Ituri.

“Of course, we’re still working on vaccines and treatments but that doesn’t mean that people cannot recover from Ebola,” he added.

The WHO said on Friday (May 29, 2026) a patient had recovered from the Bundibugyo virus, the current kind of Ebola, which has no approved treatment or vaccine. It was the first documented recovery of a confirmed Bundibugyo patient during the current outbreak.

The health organisation said latest official figures showed 906 suspected cases and 223 suspected deaths. Neighbouring Uganda has confirmed nine cases and one death, the Ugandan Health Ministry said.

The virus continues to spread faster than the response despite better-organised health facilities and new aid arrivals, Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said on Saturday (May 30, 2026), calling for the immediate expansion of testing, faster deployment of aid workers and sustained access for medical supplies.

The dangers faced by health workers have been heightened by anger among residents over the stringent medical protocols for handling the victims’ bodies, which clash with local burial rites. Residents have launched at least three attacks against health centres.

Mr. Tedros stressed the importance of involving the community in the outbreak response during the opening of the new treatment centre on Sunday.

“If you come to health facilities when you have symptoms, you can get the support and recover, so the key is to come forward as early as possible and to get the necessary support,” the WHO chief said.

“We can stop this Ebola and anyone who has it can also recover. But the rule… is this thing is everybody’s business and every citizen should be involved,” he added.

Attacks in Ituri by the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel group allied with the Islamic State group, and a coalition of ethnic militias have also hindered the response.

The illness also has been reported in the Congolese provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, south of Ituri, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group controls many key cities, including Goma and Bukavu. The rebels have reported two cases.

“The final message we would like to share with the Ituri community is that there is hope,” Pierre Akilimali, Incident Manager at Congo’s National Institute of Public Health, said during the inauguration on Sunday (May 31).

“With the symptomatic treatment that we are currently providing, we are seeing patients recover,” Mr. Akilimali added.

“We truly have hope. The virus here is not as complicated as those we have dealt with in the past, and with the support of all our partners, we believe we will be able to bring this outbreak under control as quickly as possible,” said Davin Ambitapio, another doctor at the treatment centre.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday (May 19, 2026) that the World Health Organization, the UN body which President Donald Trump stopped funding, was late in identifying a deadly outbreak of Ebola.

Asked by reporters how the United States would respond to the virus outbreak, Mr. Rubio said, “The lead is obviously going to be CDC (the Centers for Disease Control) and the World Health Organization, which was a little late to identify this thing unfortunately.”

Mr. Trump, in one of his first acts on returning to office last year, set in motion a U.S. withdrawal from the WHO, which he attacked bitterly over its response to COVID-19.

The global pandemic heavily affected his first administration in the months before he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

The WHO has been forced to cut back due to the end of funding by the United States, which had been the most generous contributor with more than $1 billion allocated annually under Mr. Biden.

When asked to explain why Mr. Rubio believed that the WHO was late, another senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it took the UN body 10 days to confirm the Ebola outbreak.

“We are now four days into our response; we could have been 14,” the official said.

The WHO “failed now numerous times. Obviously, everyone is well familiar with what they did, covering up the COVID-19 pandemic for the Chinese Communist Party,” the official said.

The WHO contests U.S. charges that it went too easy on China or allowed it to hide the COVID outbreak, saying that it needs to cooperate with all countries.

Mr. Trump has drastically slashed U.S. foreign assistance, dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was the world’s largest governmental aid provider, saying that the United States should more narrowly pursue its own interests.

The State Department announced on Tuesday (May 19, 2026) that it would fund up to 50 Ebola treatment centres in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Uganda through some $13 million in initial U.S. funding.

Mr. Rubio said that it was difficult to reach affected areas as they were in a “hard-to-get-to place in a war-torn country, unfortunately.”

The State Department in a statement said that the United States “has an ironclad commitment to ensuring this response is fully resourced, rapid, and cooperative between key global health and humanitarian partners.”

The WHO earlier on Tuesday (May 19, 2026) said that it was concerned about the “scale and speed” of the Ebola outbreak that DR Congo authorities say has caused 136 suspected deaths.