The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office advises against all travel to the whole of the eastern DRC, including North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri, Maniema, Tanganyika, Haut-Uele and Haut-Lomami, along with the strip within fifty kilometres of the Central African Republic border and Kwamouth territory. Its advice, last updated on 29 July 2026, states that M23 rebels and Rwandan Defence Forces have captured the cities of Goma and Bukavu and the surrounding areas, that both airports have been attacked and no longer run commercial flights, and that UK government support is severely limited outside Kinshasa.
Into that picture comes a public-health emergency. The World Health Organization said on 17 August that the Bundibugyo strain Ebola outbreak in the DRC is now the deadliest the country has ever faced. As of that date it had caused 2,325 deaths from 4,945 confirmed cases, a case fatality rate of 46 per cent, with 730 people in isolation or hospital. The epicentre is in the east, around Bukavu, and the UN and its health partners say they are working to stop the virus reaching neighbouring South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
The operational point for protective teams is that the outbreak and the conflict share the same ground. The epicentre sits inside the provinces the FCDO already rules a no-go, where armed groups hold the cities and the airports are shut, so the two problems compound rather than sit side by side. Medevac and extraction are already constrained by the fighting, and a haemorrhagic disease that kills close to half of confirmed cases adds screening, quarantine and short-notice border closures on top. Any tasking that touches eastern DRC should assume no commercial air out of Goma or Bukavu, limited consular reach, and health-driven movement controls that can close a route or a crossing without warning. Build medical and extraction plans that do not lean on local hospital capacity or a clean overland run, and treat the health picture as part of the threat picture, not a separate line item.
