Containment begins with trust. When families fear that coming forward means isolation when stigma keeps people away from treatment centres and misinformation spreads faster than facts the disease follows. In an Ebola outbreak, community trust is not a humanitarian consideration. It is an epidemiological one.

In Ituri, WHO is not imposing the response. It is building it alongside the people at its centre: working with religious leaders and trusted voices in mining communities, supporting burial practices that honour cultural tradition while preventing further transmission, and listening before instructing. Social listening platforms, U-Report and I-Hear-You, deployed with UNICEF are collecting and acting on community concerns in real time. A communication plan spanning both DRC and Uganda is in place to address misinformation before it takes hold.

In a province where 1.9 million people require humanitarian assistance and armed conflict limits every movement, this kind of presence is what turns an outbreak into a containable event. When you give to the WHO Foundation, you fund the community health workers who knock on doors in places where few others will go.

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