How a peer network is mobilising against Bundibugyo virus in DRC and Uganda
As a rare strain of Ebola spreads in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, health workers and responders in affected communities are activating an established peer-learning network to bolster their response.
- 16 June 2026
- 6 min read
- by María Fernanda Monzón
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has lived through more Ebola outbreaks than any other country, and still this is only the second time the Bundibugyo strain has appeared on Congolese soil since 2012.
As the response continues, the Teach to Reach network is convening health workers who are already there. Congolese practitioners from all over the country met online on 13 June 2026, following a cross-border session including Uganda on 4 June.
These are all alumni of The Geneva Learning Foundation’s leadership programmes, and they are as diverse as you can imagine.
Health workers of all kinds participate. Most work in districts and local communities, and most work for government. But civil society leaders are there too, and the first Bundibugyo sessions also included a national-response epidemiologist, a Ministry inspector who has worked a dozen Ebola responses, a risk-communication trainer who presented while in mourning, and frontline clinicians from both sides of the border.
The account that follows is drawn from their exchanges.
A network that is already there
Nobody had to be sent. The Teach to Reach network connects practitioners laterally, so a coordinator in Ituri can learn directly from a peer in North Kivu, and a government nurse can exchange with a Red Cross volunteer in the same week. These Congolese practitioners have met every Saturday since July 2019, through COVID-19 and earlier outbreaks, without per diems or external funding.
“We do not sit in lectures where we are just there to learn and leave with the baggage. We are there, together, among colleagues, sharing our experiences, our challenges, then learning from that, and then going into our communities to act.”
– Dr Noelly Watusadisi, community-level practitioner, Ministry of Health, DRC
Diagnostic delays
The first community-clustered deaths occurred in April 2026, but the alerts moving up the system did not match what was happening on the ground. Dr Eli Mutombo, on the DRC MOH national response team, traces the delay.
“The little history for this epidemic in our country is that it started from the month of April, but all the alerts that were going up were not giving us the real situation. It is only in the month of May, around 5 May, that we asked for samples that had been taken to go up to Kinshasa, to the national laboratory, so that the analyses could be deepened. Because at the level of Ituri province, we had already tested the first sample, which was negative for almost everything as a virus in these corners.”
– Dr Eli Mutombo, epidemiologist, national response team, national level, government, DRC
Dr Evariste Kayembe, on mission to Bunia and Wampara in Ituri two weeks after the declaration, names the technical reason behind that negative result.
“Our organisation had supported the rehabilitation of the large Bunia laboratory, with World Bank funding. But the device that allowed diagnosis was the PCR. This strain of the virus could not be detected by that. There had to be the cartridges, the RADI-1 device. That is how the first detections were made from INRB Kinshasa.”
– Dr Evariste Kayembe, gender-based violence specialist, health system development programme management unit, DRC
In the weeks between the first deaths and confirmation of the strain, communities settled on mystical explanations that responders are still struggling to displace.
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Trust before expertise
“If the individual does not understand the risk, they will not engage. Everything you put in place stays outside. It does not concern them.”
– Dr Dominique Aleko, risk communication trainer, national level, government, Kinshasa, DRC
Dr Aleko adds that everything you say to correct a rumour runs the risk of amplifying it, and that the answer is action and good information. Marlene Kapinga Mulumba says that’s a lesson she’s learned again and again in the foundation’s sessions.
“I remember that when I joined the Geneva Learning Foundation, they insisted on community engagement. You cannot undertake actions within a community when that community is not generally engaged.”
– Marlene Kapinga Mulumba, Chief of Service, National Directorate of Continuing Education, government, DRC
Burials turning violent
In the days before the 13 June session, Red Cross burial teams came under attack. Marlene Kapinga Mulumba explains why, in cultural terms, the response cannot simply be wished away.
“We know our African cultures and traditions: when there is a death, you must be present for your family member. But in the context of the Bundibugyo strain, you cannot be present. That is how a psychosis sets in within the population, who say that they are lying. The population tries to go and take the body, and that multiplies the cases. If family members are to be allowed to be present, they must be given the equipment.”
– Marlene Kapinga Mulumba
Dr Kayembe argues that the community members customarily responsible for burials should be equipped and trained, not replaced by outsiders. From across the border, Dr Hilary Okello, who worked the Gulu response in Uganda, holds the opposite line.
“In Africa, what people still try to cling to so much is the burial of their loved one. Once somebody has died of Ebola, let the burial team handle it, not you the family member. And this one should be done with all the precautions, because I remember the other one in Gulu, what made it spread most was at the burial site.”
– Dr Hilary Okello, Lira City Council, Uganda
The network is putting the disagreement on the record, rather than leaving it to be settled by attack and counter-attack on the ground.
The view from 14 kilometres away
Pasiko Eza speaks from Durba, 14 kilometres from the Watsa Health Zone offices, next to the badly affected Mungwalu zone. Unprompted and unfunded, he and peers in Kinshasa built a community perception survey on KoboCollect and went into the field.
“Unfortunately, the data collected revealed a critical flaw. A major share of the local population remains profoundly sceptical of the existence of the Ebola virus disease.”
Pasiko Eza, health zone focal point, community level, NGO, Durba, Ituri, DRC
One month after the declaration, and after intensive radio sensitisation, denial of the disease remains the majority view in that zone. The messages and the channels carrying them have to change.
A shared resource for a disease few have faced
The network produces timestamped, attributed operational accounts across more than 14 health zones as a by-product of weekly learning – a resource that should not be neglected amid a response that needs all hands on deck. It also keeps working under low-bandwidth, asynchronous conditions when access is restricted.
As the response continues, the foundation is putting a common reference in practitioners’ hands: a new peer learning course on Ebola virus disease. The course gives frontline workers a shared language on a disease many have not met. It is a more permanent place to share what works, and how to make it work.
Prevention is better than cure
For provinces not yet hit, the lesson is to act before rumours establish a foothold. Toyi Mirefu, in Bukavu, notes that people there are not yet “awakened” as they are in Ituri, where even a nursery-school child is coming home with the preventive measures.
“It is better to prevent than to cure. We must put our communities out of harm’s way, because it is true that the disease exists even if we do not see it.”
– Toyi Mirefu, Bukavu, South Kivu, DRC
A peer-learning network is not a team that arrives with the crisis and leaves with it. It is the threads connecting colleagues who are already there, already trusted, and in the habit of learning from one another.
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