The figure was released on Sunday, 8 November, by the World Health Organization’s office in Bujumbura: 2,855 cholera cases were recorded in Burundi from 1 January to 3 November 2026. Thirteen of the country’s 47 health districts are affected. The increase is worrying, as the disease takes hold in the country’s largest city.
The trend shows a clear acceleration. In April, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention counted just over 700 confirmed cases. By early June, the WHO had recorded 1,238. As of 11 October, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control reported 2,315 cases, including six deaths, with 737 new cases in just four weeks. That pace placed Burundi among the five countries reporting the most new cases worldwide.
The situation is tensest in Bujumbura. According to SOS Médias Burundi, cholera is gaining ground in several neighbourhoods of the economic capital, as far as Gihosha. Patients are being taken to King Khaled Hospital and Prince Louis Rwagasore Hospital, which are seeing a steady flow of new arrivals. In a city where access to safe drinking water remains difficult, many fear a rapid deterioration.
The south-west has not been spared. In late October, the disease resurfaced in the Kizuka and Gatete areas of the port town of Rumonge, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Around ten cases were reported there within a week, including one death at home, and several patients had to be hospitalised.
The country knows this scourge well. In 2025, about 3,000 cases and 13 deaths were recorded, according to the Ministry of Public Health. The influx of Congolese refugees from December 2025 onwards put further strain on health services in the east. At the heart of the problem, the same causes keep coming back: a lack of clean water, poor sanitation and precarious hygiene conditions.
The response centres on surveillance, free treatment and rapid response teams, backed by community work on water and hygiene. But as long as access to clean water remains so limited, especially in Bujumbura, health authorities will struggle to bend the curve for good.