Event: the Democratic Republic of the

The whereabouts of almost 300 people who have tested positive for Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is unknown, according to Africa’s top public health official.The humanitarian crisis amid the conflict in the affected areas means more than 1 million people are living in camps to which health workers have no access, Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Thursday.His comments came as projections from the World Health Organization’s Africa regional office, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, predicted there will be about 8,210 cases and 1,420 deaths by mid-September.Dz’na Lipe Jean‑Marie, secretary of Kpangba displacement camp in the DRC, holds an Ebola awareness session on 13 June 2026. Photograph: Gradel Muyisa Mumbere/ReutersThe modelling suggested the outbreak had a 70% chance of spreading to neighbouring South Sudan in the coming weeks.There have been 1,118 confirmed cases and 291 deaths to date in the DRC, as well as 20 cases and two deaths in neighbouring Uganda.On Wednesday, France announced that a doctor who had been working in the DRC had tested positive on his return. His employer, medical NGO Alima, said they were “working to understand how the contamination may have occurred”.Figures on the number of patients who have recovered and those being treated, as well as deaths, indicate 297 people who tested positive are unaccounted for.“This is a concern that we have. Where are these people?” asked Kaseya.DRC authorities said on Thursday that anyone who had been in affected provinces would need to wait 21 days before they could travel onwards.The outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, is the largest on record for five weeks after declaration. At the same stage, the west Africa outbreak of 2014 to 2016, which infected more than 28,000…