The African Union and India have postponed the India-Africa Forum Summit scheduled for next week in New Delhi, due to the “evolving health situation in parts of Africa”.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs made the announcement on Thursday as health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are battling a growing Ebola disease outbreak.
The decision was made in recognition of “the importance of ensuring the full participation and engagement of African leaders and stakeholders, and mindful of the emerging public health situation on the continent,” the joint statement said.
The announcement comes as the first Ebola case was confirmed in the DR Congo’s South Kivu province, an area controlled by the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, the group’s spokesman said on Thursday.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the latest outbreak in the DRC, the 17th to hit the vast central African country of more than 100 million people, is already suspected of having caused 139 deaths and there are 600 suspected cases.
Efforts to stop the latest outbreak of the deadly disease, which the WHO has declared an international emergency, have been affected by the DRC’s long running conflicts, including between the Congolese army and the M23.
The armed group has never had to manage a response to a serious epidemic of a disease like Ebola, which has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa in the past half-century.
M23 said earlier this week that it was committed to working with international partners to contain the outbreak, though the response has been complicated by the virus’s presence in densely populated urban areas in eastern DRC.
The new case was located in a rural area near the provincial capital of Bukavu, which fell into M23 hands in February 2025. It marks an expansion of an outbreak that experts believe circulated for about two months in Ituri province, several hundred kilometres to the north, before being detected last week.
According to the M23 spokesman, the Bukavu case involved a “person coming from Kisangani”, a major city in the eastern Tshopo province where no Ebola infections from the current outbreak have so far been recorded.
“The person concerned, a compatriot aged 28, unfortunately succumbed to the disease before the diagnosis was confirmed,” the spokesman added.
The Congolese authorities are yet to comment on the reported case.
Uganda concerns
In neighbouring Uganda, the government confirmed one case who had originated from DRC and later died. The body was repatriated for burial on the same day. An health ministry official said on Thursday that a second suspected case who had entered the country from DRC’s Ituri had tested negative.
On Thursday, Kampala also suspended flights to the DRC, effective within the next 48 hours, said government spokesman Alan Kasujja. He confirmed on his X account that at the moment there was no case of Ebola in the country.
First responders say they lack basic supplies, which some have attributed to foreign aid cuts by major international donors, especially the United States.
Americans who have been in DRC, Uganda or South Sudan within the last three weeks must only return to the US through Washington Dulles for enhanced screening, the US State Department said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Customs and Border Protection are applying enhanced public health screening at Dulles in response to the outbreak. An Air France flight from Paris to Detroit on Wednesday was ordered diverted to Montreal after a passenger from the DRC boarded “in error”, CBP said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday the diversion was to ensure Ebola does not reach the US. “We had a flight last night headed to Detroit that was diverted because we have to protect the American people. So, objective number one is to make sure that Ebola never reaches the United States. Objective number two is do what we can to help the people of DRC and neighbouring countries so it doesn’t spread.”
