WHO chief hails 5 Ebola recoveries as a new treatment center opens in eastern Congo

BUNIA, Congo (AP) — Five patients have recovered from a rare type of Ebola, the head of the World Health Organization said Sunday 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 center 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 Friday 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 organization said latest official figures showed 906 suspected cases and 223 suspected deaths. Neighboring Uganda has confirmed nine cases and one death, the Ugandan Health Ministry said Friday.

The virus continues to spread faster than the response despite better-organized health facilities and new aid arrivals, Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said Saturday, 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 centers.

Tedros stressed the importance of involving the community in the outbreak response during the opening of the new treatment center 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 the region 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.

ADF fighters killed seven people Saturday in Beni, North Kivu province, an area also affected by the outbreak, the Congolese army and civil society groups said.

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

“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.

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

——

Banchereau reported from Dakar, Senegal.

A view of a ward at the Evangelical Medical Center (CEM) during a visit by the Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Bunia, Congo, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, visits the Evangelical Medical Center (CEM) in Bunia, Congo, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, center right, visits the Evangelical Medical Center (CEM) in Bunia, Congo, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, visits health workers at the Evangelical Medical Centre (CEM) in Bunia, Congo, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

BANGKOK (AP) — Heavy rains threatened to delay the search for two people missing in a flooded cave in Laos on Sunday, after the rescue of five other people who were trapped underground for over a week.

Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, one of the first international rescuers to arrive at the site, told The Associated Press that rains had filled the cave up to the second chamber, preventing divers from entering the cave until pumps can lower the water level.

Making the situation even more difficult, a drainage pump broke down, said fellow diver Yoshitaka Isaji of Japan.

The seven villagers reportedly entered the cave last week to look for valuable minerals such as gold before being trapped by a flash flood that blocked their way out. One other villager escaped and alerted the authorities.

Rescue teams from Laos and neighboring Thailand have been working together in the past week at the site in a rugged area in the central province of Xaisomboun, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of the capital, Vientiane. They were joined by divers from countries including Finland, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, France and Australia.

Several of the rescuers previously took part in the complicated 2018 cave rescue in northern Thailand that saved 12 schoolboys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave.

The rescued men are being treated at a local hospital and are doing well, Malaysian diver Lee Kian Lie, who’s taking part in the operation, told the AP on Sunday.

“We interviewed them about how the deeper part of the cave looks like. We will continue to search based on the information we have, and perhaps we will be able to get to the other two,” he said.

According to rescuers, they have navigated more than 200 meters (650 feet) into the cave and discovered five chambers in the system. The five people rescued so far were found in the fifth chamber.

Paasi told the AP that the survivors said there’s a narrow crack in the fifth chamber that could be a passage leading to a deeper part of the cave system.

“This was the only place that we haven’t checked in the mine, where the two lost miners could still be,” he said during a video interview.

“Now there’s a theory that, through that small crack, it still continues, and there’s a sixth chamber, which gives us hope now that, if we could penetrate that small restriction, we might be able to reach the sixth chamber and then see what is there.”

Isaji explained the difficulties of such an endeavor.

“The area between the fifth and sixth chamber is extremely narrow, and no one has seen its shape yet. Furthermore, it’s a narrow space, and of course, it’s muddy water, so visibility is absolutely zero. I’ve also heard that the shape is such that you have to twist your body to get through."

He suggested that even if rescuers could get through and find another trapped person, it would be extremely difficult to bring them out. In such a case, he said, a plan would probably involve getting food and water to those trapped and waiting for the passage to be drained.

Isaji also mentioned the possibility that the two missing villagers are not actually in the cave at all, since they were said to have moved separately from the five rescued people.

The five who were rescued were first found Wednesday. They were identified by their first names as Khamla, Mued, Ee, Ing and Laen.

The first man was safely extracted on Friday, guided through a narrow flooded passage by an expert diver. The remaining four left the cave on Saturday, after the water receded enough for them to walk out on their own, rescuers said.

The divers had been preparing to help with another extraction when the trapped men apparently saw that the water level dropped and decided to seize the opportunity, Paasi said, adding that he would have done the same had he been in their situation.

He and other people waiting at the cave entrance were taken by surprise, and when they emerged the atmosphere was like a party, he said.

Videos posted online Saturday showed emotional moments as the men emerged one by one from the cave. Some collapsed on the ground at the cave’s entrance, and were hugged by a group of workers who cried in joy. Later moments showed them lying on a stretcher, wrapped in foil blankets and fitted with an oxygen mask before being transported out of the site.

In this image taken from an online interview, Finnish diver Mikko Paasi speaks to the Associated Press on the latest situation around search and rescue in a flooded cave in Xaisomboun province, Laos Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo)