WHO Gets $3m to Put Community Evidence at Heart of BVD Response

The funding will help WHO combine community-generated evidence with epidemiological, clinical and laboratory information throughout the outbreak response.

The World Health Organization has received a US$3 million grant from Wellcome to strengthen the response to Bundibugyo virus disease by giving health authorities a clearer understanding of what affected communities are experiencing, how people view the risks around them and what may be preventing them from seeking care.

The funding will help WHO combine community-generated evidence with epidemiological, clinical and laboratory information throughout the outbreak response. With no specific medical countermeasures currently available for BVD, information about behaviour, trust, access to healthcare and attitudes towards public health measures can help authorities understand why transmission continues and where practical changes could make a difference.

Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director of WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said outbreaks are shaped by more than the pathogen itself, since people's understanding of risk and their ability to access services can influence how quickly health authorities bring an outbreak under control.

Community experiences are shaping decisions on the ground

Since a Public Health Emergency of International Concern for Bundibugyo virus disease was declared on May 17, 2026, WHO has been working with the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to carry out rapid assessments in affected communities.

These assessments look beyond case numbers and other traditional outbreak indicators by examining how people seek medical help, respond to health measures and cope with the wider social and economic consequences of the disease. The findings give response teams information they can use when deciding where services need to improve and which barriers may be making disease control more difficult.

Early evidence has already pointed to practical areas for action, including stronger community-based surveillance, better access to toll-free hotlines and increased psychosocial support for frontline health workers. Communities have also raised issues around ambulance delays, limited reception capacity at treatment centres and uncertainty about when laboratory results will arrive.

Rapid assessments bring social science into outbreak response

WHO describes community protection assessments as a scientific tool rather than simply a way of collecting public feedback. Researchers use standard methods to understand how people interpret health risks, make decisions and interact with medical services, allowing this information to become part of the intelligence used by outbreak response teams.

Dr Nina Gobat, WHO Senior Technical Officer for Community Protection and Resilience, said community evidence needs to be collected rigorously while moving quickly enough to remain useful during a fast-changing health emergency.

The assessment methodology was developed by WHO with UNICEF, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and other partners. Similar approaches have already been used during responses to Ebola, mpox and cholera, generating community evidence in settings affecting more than 8.8 million people.

The Wellcome funding will allow these assessments to continue systematically during the BVD response rather than being used only at isolated points, creating an ongoing picture of changes in behaviour, public concerns and access to services.

Building trust could improve the effectiveness of health measures

Community evidence can reveal problems that may not appear clearly in laboratory results or epidemiological data, including fear surrounding treatment centres, misinformation, difficulties reaching healthcare and concerns about practices such as safe and dignified burials.

Natsuko Imai, Research Lead in Epidemics and Epidemiology at Wellcome, said understanding these social and behavioural realities from the beginning of a crisis allows health authorities to design interventions around the circumstances people actually face.

The approach also builds on integrated outbreak analytics used during the 2018–2020 Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where combining different forms of evidence helped response teams develop a broader understanding of transmission and community behaviour.

WHO and its partners now want community-generated information to become a routine part of outbreak intelligence during the current BVD response and future emergencies. For families living through an outbreak, that could mean health measures that respond more closely to everyday realities, while authorities gain better information for making decisions quickly and building public confidence.