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A breakthrough in the fight against the deadly Bundibugyo Ebola virus could be weeks away, as five manufacturers are poised to begin field trials for rapid antigen tests in eastern Congo.
The development, spearheaded by a global diagnostics alliance, offers hope for containing an ongoing outbreak that has claimed over 400 lives across three Congolese provinces.
Currently, health officials face delays, often waiting days for laboratory results, as no rapid test is approved for the Bundibugyo strain. On-the-spot diagnostics would enable swift identification and isolation of cases, drastically improving containment efforts.
Relatives and friends of displaced people mourn next to a coffin of a suspected Ebola victim before the burial at the Kigonze displaced persons camp, one month after an Ebola outbreak was declared, in Bunia, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, June 18, 2026 (Reuters)
FIND, a Geneva-based non-profit, selected the five potential manufacturers from 21 candidates, including two from West Africa, one from the US, and two from South Korea. Unlike previous Ebola outbreaks where rapid tests were limited to deceased individuals, the aim is to develop tests for live patients’ blood samples. Kavi Ramjeet, FIND’s head of business development, indicated that initial tests could reach the field by mid-July. Manufacturers were chosen for their capacity to quickly produce thousands of tests, though the final rollout timeline hinges on regulatory approval.
History of the Ebola outbreak
The outbreak, declared on May 15, has so far infected 1,406 people and killed 438 across the eastern provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu, according to government data released on Wednesday. Sources have told Reuters that officials are also tracing possible exposures in two more provinces. Responders are grappling with an under-prepared health system strained by sweeping foreign aid cuts and a population scarred by decades of war and deeply distrustful of officials and outsiders. There are now 10 laboratories able to test for Bundibugyo and three types of test being used. However, a lack of infrastructure, including reliable power and paved roads, as well as issues with insecurity, add to the challenge of getting timely results from lab-based tests.
Antigen rapid diagnostic tests “have the potential to dramatically accelerate case identification and isolation decisions – deployable at a cost, scale and speed that molecular testing, however decentralised, cannot match,” the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat (IPPS), a global alliance that aims to improve the response to pandemics, said in an update published this week.
FIND is also hoping to identify manufacturers that can provide molecular tests in cartridges that are accessible to laboratory workers with limited training and can be more easily deployed closer to the point of care.
