Uganda's Ebola Response Is Working. The Deeper Problem Is That It Shouldn't Have to Work This Hard

President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni met with World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at State House Entebbe on June 10, 2026 to review Uganda's response to the ongoing Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak. The meeting, attended by senior officials from Uganda's Ministry of Health and the WHO Uganda Country Office, covered containment measures, cross-border cooperation with the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a proposal to establish medical treatment centers near the Uganda-DRC border to reduce the volume of Congolese patients seeking care inside Uganda.

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Uganda's situation, as briefed to the WHO delegation, is defined by a single epidemiological fact: fourteen of the nineteen confirmed Ugandan cases involve members of the same family who crossed from the DRC. No new case had been registered in the three days preceding the meeting, suggesting that the initial transmission chain has been interrupted. The Ministry of Health's Permanent Secretary, Dr. Diana Atwine, told the meeting that surveillance and response teams remain deployed, contact monitoring is continuing, and screening at border crossings has been tightened. The WHO Director-General praised Uganda's capacity and preparedness, citing the country's experience with previous Ebola outbreaks as a foundation for the current response.

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The system forces at work here extend well beyond Uganda's borders. The Bundibugyo outbreak is centered in Ituri province in the DRC, one of the most conflict-affected territories in Africa, where insecurity limits access for health workers, disrupts supply lines, and creates conditions in which sick people have strong incentives to seek treatment elsewhere. Congolese patients have increasingly crossed into Uganda not because Uganda is geographically convenient but because they have developed confidence in Uganda's capacity to manage infectious disease. That confidence, while reflecting genuine institutional strength on Uganda's part, is also a symptom of the DRC's own system failure.

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The proposed solution, establishing four treatment camps within the DRC close to the Uganda border, addresses this dynamic directly. President Museveni, when advising on the camp locations, specified that they should be positioned near the border rather than far inside the DRC, targeting populations that would otherwise cross into Uganda in search of care. Uganda's Health Minister, Dr. Chris Baryomunsi, described the initiative as a way to strengthen cross-border disease control while supporting local response efforts. The WHO Director-General endorsed the approach. But implementing it requires cooperation from Congolese authorities in a region where the national government's control is contested, and where some of the security conditions that drive the displacement are produced by armed groups that include the M23, backed by Rwandan forces, as documented in a separate Human Rights Watch report released on the same day.

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Uganda's decision to cancel the annual Martyrs Day celebrations at Namugongo carries real costs that official statements tend to understate. The gathering typically draws more than three million pilgrims from Uganda, DRC, Tanzania, Kenya, West Africa, and beyond. It is one of the largest annual events on the continent, with significant economic and cultural weight for communities throughout the region. The WHO Director-General called the cancellation courageous. For the communities that depend on the pilgrimage for income, for the faithful who travel significant distances to attend, and for a government that had already suspended public holiday events to save money, courageous is also a word for expensive.

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What is not being acknowledged openly is that the cross-border health cooperation being proposed between Uganda and the DRC depends on state capacity and political stability that the DRC does not consistently have in its eastern provinces. Uganda can establish treatment camps near the border and can conduct outreach. But the underlying transmission dynamics that make Congolese patients seek treatment in Uganda will not change until the DRC's own health system functions reliably in Ituri, and that requires not just health investment but a degree of security and governance that conflict has prevented for three decades. The WHO's support through finance, logistics, personnel, and technical expertise is welcome and necessary. It does not resolve the structural problem.