The new academic year began across the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Tuesday. In Ituri province, where an Ebola outbreak has been running for four months, the union representing teachers had asked the government to postpone it. The government did not.

According to the latest government figures, 2,950 people have died among 6,100 confirmed cases since the outbreak began in mid-May. Authorities describe it as the fastest-growing outbreak of the disease ever recorded. By early August, according to the International Rescue Committee, 743 of the cases and 330 of the deaths were children.

Several students, teachers and head teachers in Ituri died during the closing months of the last school year.

Two decisions, not one

The reopening is not uniform, and the distinction matters. In lower-risk areas, schools opened on 1 September as scheduled. In higher-risk areas — including Bunia, the provincial capital and the epicentre of the outbreak — schools have been waiting on guidance from health authorities before opening fully.

Where government schools in Ituri did open, several recorded low turnouts. That is a decision being taken by parents rather than by ministries. One parent in Bunia told the Associated Press that the restart came as a surprise and that she was keeping her child at home for now. Provincial authorities in Ituri did not respond to a request for comment on what measures were in place to prevent transmission in classrooms.

Why a classroom is a specific kind of problem

Ebola does not spread through the air. It spreads through direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of someone who is already symptomatic, or with surfaces those fluids have touched. That is why the disease has historically concentrated in households, in funerals and in health facilities, rather than sweeping through populations the way a respiratory virus does.

Schools sit awkwardly against that transmission route. Aid agencies working in Ituri have pointed to the close physical contact typical of crowded classrooms and, in boarding schools, of communal dormitories where children sleep, wash and eat together. A child who develops a fever at school is also a child who has spent the day within touching distance of dozens of others, and who goes home to a household that may not report it.

The counter-argument, which UN agencies and the government both make, is that closed schools carry their own costs. Children out of school for extended periods are less likely to return at all. Schools are also, in practice, a surveillance network: a place where a trained teacher checking temperatures at the door may notice a sick child that no clinic would have seen.

UNICEF says it is supporting the authorities to prevent transmission in schools. The Norwegian Refugee Council, which works with the education ministry in the province, describes temperature checks at classroom entrances as part of the adapted measures. The IRC says it is running prevention work across 30 schools in Ituri, training teachers in Ebola prevention and child protection and holding age-appropriate awareness sessions.

The vaccine question, again

Containment here has been hampered throughout by the absence of an approved vaccine or treatment for this particular virus. Congolese authorities have distributed thousands of doses of Ervebo, which the World Health Organization has said might offer some protection, but that is a materially weaker statement than the one usually made about Ebola vaccination.

We set out the reason in an earlier explainer: Ebola is not one virus but several species, and the licensed vaccine was developed against the Zaire species. This outbreak, as we reported when it became the second-largest on record, is a different one. Cross-protection is plausible on immunological grounds and unproven in the field, which is why the WHO’s wording has stayed cautious.

Numbers that do not quite agree

Readers comparing figures across agencies this week will find they do not match. The government’s Tuesday count gives 6,100 cases and 2,950 deaths. The IRC’s statement, issued at the end of last week, cites more than 5,945 cases and over 2,862 deaths.

The gap is a few days of reporting lag rather than a dispute. Agencies publish against the last figures they have verified, and in an outbreak adding cases daily, a statement written on Friday is already behind by Tuesday. It is the same problem we described when two current death tolls for the Nepal floods differed for entirely legitimate reasons.

The trend both sets describe is the same, and it is upward. That is the context in which several million children went back to class.

What to watch

The meaningful indicator over the next month is not attendance figures. It is whether any confirmed case is traced back to a school, and how quickly. If the prevention measures hold, reopening will look in retrospect like the right call under pressure. If they do not, the teachers’ union will have been right, and the cost will be counted in children.

Sources

• Associated Press reporting from Bunia on the school reopening, 1 September 2026
• International Rescue Committee statement on Ebola and the return to school
• Norwegian Refugee Council, DR Congo education response
• Democratic Republic of the Congo health ministry outbreak figures
• World Health Organization guidance on Ervebo use in the current outbreak