Genome sequencing has shown that this outbreak was not related to the 2014–15 West Africa Ebola virus epidemic, but was of the same EBOV species.

[4] The outbreak was traced to a woman living in Ikanamongo Village in the remote northern Équateur province who fell ill after handling bushmeat.

[5] Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors without Borders (MSF) deployed a team of 50 staff to the area and opened two EVD treatment centers with a combined capacity of 50 beds.

It was stated that the DRC would therefore be declared free of Ebola disease 42 days after the date of the second negative test if no new cases were reported.

The woman's husband believed to have been the index case told an investigation team that shortly before she became ill ,she had visited two women who later died from Ebola-like symptoms.

The first case of Ebola disease ever recorded occurred in August 1976 in Yambuku, a small village in Mongala District in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo (then known as Zaire).

[12] The first victim of the disease was the village school headmaster, who had toured an area near the Central African Republic border along the Ebola river in mid-August.