LIVE TRACKER · Earth & Hazards
Global Outbreak Tracker: Live Map of Active Disease Outbreaks
Where are disease outbreaks active in the world right now?
Outbreak data is temporarily unavailable.
This tracker draws on the United Nations’ ReliefWeb service. If it can’t be reached right now, the live list will return automatically once the connection is restored. For urgent guidance, always rely on your national health authority and the World Health Organization.
Source: ReliefWeb (UN OCHA) · marked at country level, not by individual case · each entry links to the official WHO / CDC / Africa CDC situation report. This is a situational-awareness map, not medical advice.
When news breaks of an outbreak somewhere in the world, the first question is usually the simplest: where, and how serious? This hub is built to answer that calmly and from authoritative sources. The status block above lists the disease outbreaks currently flagged as active by the United Nations' ReliefWeb service — each marked to the country it's affecting, labeled ongoing or alert, and linked straight to the official situation report.
Open the live map and switch on the Disease Outbreaks layer to see them plotted as violet markers, sized by status.
What this map is — and what it isn't
It's worth being clear up front, because health information deserves care. This is a country-level overview, not a case-by-case map. Each marker tells you that an outbreak is active in a country and points you to the verified figures; it does not claim to show where individual people are infected. That kind of real-time, location-level data isn't openly available, and presenting it as if it were would be misleading. The honest, useful thing a map like this can do is show you the global shape of the situation and get you to the right source fast.
For the verified numbers — confirmed and suspected cases, deaths, affected regions — always follow the Official report link on each entry. That takes you to the ReliefWeb page, which gathers the primary reporting from the World Health Organization, national health ministries, the US CDC and Africa CDC.
Reading an outbreak responsibly
A few habits keep the picture in proportion:
- Status over headlines. An "alert" is a developing situation that may or may not grow; an "ongoing" outbreak is one being actively responded to. Both matter, but they mean different things.
- Suspected vs. confirmed. Early in an outbreak, suspected case counts run well ahead of laboratory-confirmed ones, and the two are often reported together. The official reports separate them — read them that way.
- Endemic isn't the same as emergency. Some diseases circulate in a region most years. A marker doesn't automatically mean a crisis; the linked report gives the context.
- Distance and spread. Most outbreaks stay regional. When health authorities are concerned about international spread, they say so plainly — the WHO's emergency declarations are the signal to watch, not the number of markers on a map.
How outbreaks get declared and tracked
The journey from "a cluster of unusual illness" to a formally tracked outbreak follows a real process — local detection, laboratory confirmation, official declaration, and sometimes a WHO Public Health Emergency of International Concern for the most serious events. Understanding that pipeline is the best defense against both panic and complacency. Our companion guide, How disease outbreaks are declared and tracked, walks through each step and explains what the terms actually mean.
The bigger hazard picture
Outbreaks rarely happen in isolation from everything else. They're often worst where other crises — conflict, flooding, displacement — have already strained a health system. That's why this layer sits naturally alongside the global disaster alerts from GDACS: turn both on to see how natural hazards and humanitarian emergencies overlap. For the broader live picture, the earthquake tracker and the other hazard layers round out a single, honest view of where the world needs attention right now.
A note on trust
We keep this layer deliberately sober: official sources only, country-level markers, and links rather than our own case numbers. If the feed is ever briefly unavailable, the list says so plainly instead of guessing. The goal is a map you can check in a worrying moment and come away better informed and pointed at the truth — never more alarmed than the facts warrant.
Frequently asked questions
Does this map show where individual cases are?
No — and that's deliberate. Open, reliable data on the location of individual cases simply does not exist in real time, and mapping people that way would be both inaccurate and harmful. Instead, each marker sits on the country that an outbreak is affecting, drawn from the United Nations' ReliefWeb service, and links you to the official situation report where the real, verified figures live. Think of it as a 'where in the world' overview, not a street-level case map.
Where does the data come from?
From ReliefWeb, the humanitarian information service run by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). ReliefWeb formally tracks disasters — including epidemics — and tags each one with a status and an affected country. We show the active epidemics and link each to its ReliefWeb page, which in turn gathers the underlying reports from the World Health Organization, national health ministries, the US CDC, Africa CDC and others. For any decision that matters, go to those primary sources.
What do 'ongoing' and 'alert' mean?
They are ReliefWeb's own status labels. 'Ongoing' means an outbreak with significant humanitarian impact that is actively being responded to and updated. 'Alert' means a developing situation that has the potential for significant impact but is still emerging. Both are shown here; outbreaks marked ongoing are drawn slightly larger on the map.
How current is it?
The feed refreshes regularly, but outbreak tracking is inherently slower than something like an earthquake feed. Official figures are confirmed and published by health authorities on their own cadence — often daily or every few days during a major event — so treat the dates and the linked reports, not the marker alone, as the timeline of record.
Is this medical advice?
No. This is a situational-awareness map to help you see the global picture and find authoritative sources quickly. It is not medical, travel or public-health advice. For guidance on risk, travel and prevention, follow your national health authority and the WHO.
SEE IT LIVE
Everything in this guide is on one real-time map.