KAMPALA, Uganda -- An Ebola response team ran into an unexpected obstacle when they arrived to spray a roadside market with disinfectant a couple of weeks ago: the admin for a local WhatsApp group.
"You have come to spread Ebola in our village. You must leave now," the young man said at his banana stall in Kasenyi in Irumu district, in the eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of Congo, before pulling his Chinese-made Tecno smartphone to record a voice note, according to interviews with the volunteers from the local Boga Youth Council.
His note, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, told group members that foreign agents had arrived in the village with spray pumps and Hazmat suits to spread the lethal virus. He also alleged that hundreds of more agents had been paid huge sums of money to fan out along the shores of Lake Albert, infecting villagers' homes with Ebola.
Outbreaks and pandemics are often accompanied by misinformation. The Covid-19 pandemic still fuels conspiracy theories. But voice notes broadcast over WhatsApp add a new dimension to the problem, supercharging rumors and falsehoods and spreading them to people who might not competently read or write, if they are literate at all.
Within minutes of the young man in Kasenyi sending out his note, a crowd had gathered around the four volunteers, heckling them and shouting insults. Some slapped and punched them, confiscating the spray pumps before marching the group around a mile to a nearby town where they handed them over to police.
"We almost got lynched. We were just lucky," one of the volunteers said by telephone.
For the doctors trying to tame the outbreak, the worst in years, it is an unwelcome distraction. They have to take breaks in hospital wards to debunk the claims circulating in the WhatsApp groups, some of which have thousands of members, when they could be working to contain the rapidly spreading Bundibugyo Ebola strain, for which there are no approved vaccines or drugs.
"In this era of social media, information spreads rapidly. Within a very short time, these voice notes circulate around entire WhatsApp groups. They are very harmful," said Mohammed Saani Yakubu, ActionAid's country director in Congo.
People with Ebola-like symptoms avoid seeking treatment, fearing they will be quarantined. In some cases, relatives flee homes when a family member dies, without informing authorities, leaving highly infectious corpses unattended for days.
Chikwe Ihekweazu, head of the World Health Organization's Emergencies Program, told a briefing in Geneva this week that many of the newly reported deaths from Ebola were people who died in their communities without ever reaching a health facility, describing it as "the most alarming finding."
"You have to imagine that this is a fire," Ihekweazu said. "There's something driving the fire at its heart, and it's also expanding at the same time."
The epidemic now appears to be spinning out of control. Confirmed infections shot past 2,000 this month since it was first detected two months ago, with 754 deaths, according to the Congolese Health Ministry. In the 2018-20 epidemic, the second deadliest on record, it took 10 months for Ebola cases to reach that mark.
Misinformation and in some cases superstition are playing a role, and health workers' attention is turning to how to combat false news.
A spokeswoman for Meta Platforms, which owns the messaging app, said that across the world WhatsApp is increasingly restricting users from sharing forwarded content by flagging messages with labels. The platform also limits the number of times a user can forward messages as a way to slow potential misinformation.
The spokeswoman didn't respond to questions on the voice notes being shared on WhatsApp groups in Congo, which are often formed around workplace organizations, community neighborhoods or religious groups and frequently describe Ebola as a hoax brought by foreigners to steal Congolese minerals and resources.
Yakubu, the ActionAid director, said the most effective way to counter the misinformation would be to "quickly track down the misleading rumors and pull them down." Without the ability to do so, he said, charities risk sending hundreds of volunteers into harm's way.
Already, the wave of rumors is converting into attacks on Ebola treatment centers and assaults of health workers and volunteers, driving the spread of the virus. According to the WHO, the rate of recorded infections in July has been the fastest in any previous Ebola outbreak, including some 80 cases in a single day.
The outbreak has spread to at least five provinces, alarming responders. This week, infections were confirmed in Kisangani -- a city of more than 1.6 million people and a major transport hub linking gold- and diamond-mining heartlands in eastern Congo to the west, raising the risk of wider transmission along the busy transport corridors, including the Congo River, according to the United Nations.
Days after the assault on volunteers in Irumu, the district recorded its first Ebola case, the Health Ministry said. The patient, a local farmer, had been selling cassava to traders from Bunia, the provincial capital of Ituri and the center of the current outbreak. Located about 60 miles southeast of Bunia, the Bahema-Boga territory in Irumu is the region's food basket, where traders flock to its weekly markets to buy supplies ranging from grain to fish. But many residents still believe Ebola is a hoax.
When one of the first patients died in the nearby village of Bafwabango earlier this month, word spread through a WhatsApp group that a burial team was preparing to harvest body organs from his remains after obtaining the family's consent. Hours later, a mob arrived and torched the Ebola treatment center, forcing nearly a dozen patients to flee. A police officer was lynched as he tried to disperse the crowd, U.N.-sponsored Radio Okapi reported.
In the rebel-held areas in North and South Kivu provinces, as well as neighboring Uganda, the outbreak has largely been contained.
South Kivu has now gone 49 consecutive days without confirming a new Ebola case, exceeding the disease's maximum 42-day incubation period, the U.N. said this week. Last month, the M23 rebel group said the outbreak was over in North Kivu, although the WHO hasn't made such a declaration.
Some aid officials say one reason for low infections is either unreported cases or strict measures imposed by the rebels. Travelers from Ebola-affected regions are barred from entering rebel-held areas or must isolate for three weeks, according to aid workers. At some checkpoints, rebel guards impose random searches on people's phones to hunt down misleading messages.
In the rest of the country there is less control, and while educational campaigns are raising awareness in some regions, there is a long way to go, aid officials say.
"Some people are still treating themselves at home," said Rose Tchwenko, Mercy Corps' country director for Congo, "because of the fear of treatment centers and stigma outweighing trust in the response."
Write to Nicholas Bariyo at nicholas.bariyo@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 16, 2026 13:54 ET (17:54 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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