No cases yet – but South Sudan isn’t taking any chances. With hundreds crossing daily through bush paths and busy market routes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, health workers on the Western Equatoria frontier are on high alert.

Here’s the situation on the ground, reported by cbinews.tv:

You can feel the tension at Nabiapai – one of South Sudan’s busiest crossings into the DRC. On a normal day, frontline staff say they screen 200 to 500 people. Come market day? That number explodes to more than 800 to 1,000 travellers pushing through in a single day.

“We screen more than 800 to 1,000 people at this border,” Severio Peter, a frontline health worker at Nabiapai, told officials during a UN assessment visit.

And that’s just the official route.

The real headache, he said, is the sheer number of “porous entries” – informal footpaths through the bush where people can slip past screening points entirely. In a region where families, traders and farmers live on both sides of the border, it’s almost impossible to seal.

That’s exactly why a high-level UN delegation has been in Western Equatoria State this week – to check how prepared the state really is and to tighten cooperation on public health, humanitarian access and peacebuilding.

So far, so good. South Sudan has not confirmed a single Ebola case. But the mood is very much one of “prepare now or pay later.”

Western Equatoria Governor Badagbu Rimbasa put it bluntly: “Ebola is not yet in South Sudan, but we must do everything in our preparedness to prevent Ebola from entering South Sudan.”

State Health Minister Nama Bukulu is now pushing for even tougher surveillance – including night shifts at border checkpoints to catch travellers arriving after hours.

The UN is backing that call. Deputy Special Representative Ramanathan Balakrishnan said talks with state authorities focused on strengthening the partnership between the government and the UN, including the security of humanitarian operations and access to communities in need.

“We also talked about the Ebola preparedness and the support that would be expected from the state authorities,” he said, adding that while there have been improvements, more work is needed.

Why this border matters – the bigger picture:

This isn’t new territory for South Sudan. In fact, the world’s first ever recorded Ebola outbreak happened right here in Nzara, Western Equatoria, in 1976 – at the same time as an outbreak in Yambuku, then Zaire, now DRC. Southern Sudan saw another outbreak in Yambio in 2004.

The DRC remains the global epicentre. It has now recorded 16 outbreaks since 1976. The most recent was declared on 4 September 2025 in Kasai Province – 64 cases including 53 confirmed and 11 probable, with 45 deaths, a case fatality ratio of around 70%. That follows the devastating 2018-2020 North Kivu/Ituri outbreak where WHO warned the risk of spread beyond DRC was “very high” because of heavy cross-border movement and insecurity.

Ebola Zaire, the strain behind most DRC outbreaks, typically kills 60-90% of those infected, and the average fatality rate across all Ebola viruses is around 50%. There is no room for complacency.

For South Sudan, with a fragile health system and years of humanitarian crisis, preparedness is linked to overall outbreak readiness. The country began building its Public Health Emergency Operations Centre even before the 2018 DRC outbreak under International Health Regulations.

Right now, all eyes are on Western Equatoria. It’s busy, it’s porous, and it’s the frontline.

As told to cbinews.tv, vigilance at Nabiapai and other crossings will be the difference between containment and catastrophe.

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