UN News: 'Faith, Fear, and Trust' — DRC Ebola Response Builds Community Partnerships; Testing Capacity Surges 20-Fold to 800/Day

UN News published an in-depth feature on 6 June 2026 documenting the community engagement strategy at the heart of the DRC Ebola response in Ituri Province. Key findings: (1) Testing capacity has expanded from 40 tests per day at the outbreak's start to 800 daily tests, enabling suspected cases to be confirmed or ruled out far more rapidly. (2) Community trust remains the central challenge — many families in Ituri attribute deaths to witchcraft or poisoning rather than infection, and armed conflict has generated deep mistrust of external health workers. (3) WHO response teams have adopted a coexistence rather than confrontation model: health workers partner with traditional healers, community elders, and religious leaders rather than excluding them. (4) Traditional healers are formally engaged as outbreak response partners — the first systematic integration of this approach since the 2018–2020 Kivu outbreak, where exclusion of traditional practitioners was identified as a key community resistance driver. (5) WHO and DRC MoH have deployed 'survivor ambassadors' — people who recovered from Bundibugyo disease — to speak directly with communities about the illness and the value of ETU care. (6) The six-month Continental Preparedness and Response Plan (launched June 5 for $518 million) specifically funds community engagement programs across the DRC-Uganda corridor and 12 high-risk neighboring countries. Response experts caution that even with improved testing capacity and community outreach, contact tracing coverage in DRC remains at approximately 45% — still well below the 90% threshold needed for containment. The outbreak continues to affect 17 health zones in Ituri Province with 381 total DRC confirmed cases.