Ilunga Kalenga began consulting for the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) health ministry in 2000 After two-and-a-half years, on 22 July 2019, Kalenga resigned after his mandate was curtailed to only non-Ebola public-health matters, attributing his departure to the Congolese President
Félix Tshisekedi's decision to oversee the DRC's Ebola response personally, and to his desire to avoid "creating confusion" and to avert the "inevitable...predictable [public] outcry" such a sharing of oversight entailed. Tshisekedi then appointed a team of experts, led by
Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, described by
The Lancet as Africa's Ebola hunter, to direct the Congo's Ebola response. He also served on the board of the African Constituency Bureau (2018–20). ==Selected publications==