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ebola
Congo's Ebola Outbreak 'Growing Exponentially,' Warns UN Official
In just under 100 days, the epidemic has killed over 2,500 people and is "now covering an area that is bigger than France."
Aug 21, 2026
It's been nearly 100 days since authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo declared the Ebola outbreak and, as a key United Nations humanitarian official said Friday, the disease has now killed over 2,500 people and continues to rapidly spread.
"The Ebola outbreak is growing exponentially," said the UN's senior Ebola coordinator, Julien Harneis. "In the last three months, 2,500 people have died, and half of those in the last 20 days."
"The epidemic is spreading widely," he continued. "It's now covering an area that is bigger than France."
Harneis acknowledged the outbreak's toll on healthcare providers, with 160 having contracted Ebola—43 of whom have died. He said that "apart from the threat from the virus, healthcare workers and frontline workers have been attacked by youths, ambulances have been burned and stoned, and the healthcare facilities have been attacked."
"Conditions on the ground are extremely difficult," the official said, "but we will continue deploying all the humanitarian and medical assistance needed until the job is done."
"We're only covered for the next weeks, and very soon funding will run out," he noted. "Every delay in funding and implementation makes this epidemic more deadly, more difficult to stop and more expensive. So, we need that international support immediately."
As the outbreak has worsened, US President Donald Trump has faced renewed global criticism for withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), dismantling the US Agency for International Development, and cutting public health funds.
Harneis nodded to those moves on Friday, according to UN News:
Although the United States has contributed $80 million to the DRC government to boost bed capacity and safe burial practices, among other support, cuts to aid work—especially in the last two years—have reduced the capacity of humanitarian organizations by more than 30%, he added.
Despite these challenges, multiple specialist UN agencies continue to work alongside the DRC authorities to push back Ebola. They include the World Health Organization, the World Food Program, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN migration agency (IOM) and partners including Médecins Sans Frontières.
"This epidemic continues to spread, moving faster than the response can keep up," Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim, international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, said in a Friday statement. "Treatment centers remain essential for saving lives, but this response needs more than extra beds."
"It needs better detection, safe isolation for sick people and their contacts, and support to health workers," Abdelmoneim said. "People seeking care in existing health facilities also need to be protected from infection. Crucially, the response must be built with communities, not around them."
Trish Newport, the group's emergency program manager in Ituri province, said that UN agencies, humanitarian organizations, and the Congolese Ministry of Health "must urgently expand" training and support so that workers and community leaders can "help detect cases early, refer people safely, reinforce infection prevention and control, and protect themselves and others from infection."
WHO said Thursday that "Ituri province remains the epicenter, but ongoing transmission, spread to new areas, a high case fatality ratio (47%), and increasing infections among healthcare workers indicate that the outbreak remains severe and difficult to control."
"Imported cases have been reported in Uganda, France, and Germany, demonstrating the potential for international spread, although no sustained transmission has occurred outside the DRC," the agency continued. "The overall risk remains very high in the DRC, high for neighboring countries, particularly those sharing land borders with the DRC, and low at the regional and global levels, where preparedness and rapid detection measures are helping to prevent wider spread."
While the DRC infections are being caused by the Bundibugyo virus, the government recently requested a release of Ervebo vaccines from the global stockpile, given that, as WHO explained Thursday, "early laboratory and animal data suggest it may provide some protection."
The UN agency said that the International Coordinating Group on Vaccine Provision, which manages the stockpile, informed the DRC of an immediate initial release of 70,000 doses, including 50,000 for frontline and health workers, and 20,000 "for a Phase 3 clinical trial to understand the impact of the vaccine on the Bundibugyo virus."
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Amnesty Calls for 'Global Solidarity' as Ebola Outbreak Becomes Worst in DRC's History
"The people of the DRC deserve the world’s attention, resources, care, and solidarity," said one advocate.
Aug 17, 2026
As the Ebola crisis that was first detected in the Democratic Republic of Congo in May became the deadliest outbreak of the disease in the country's history on Monday, one global public health expert in the United Kingdom pointed to the key difference between the 2014 epidemic in West Africa and the one that has now killed at least 2,325 people in the DRC.
In 2014, wrote Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, in The Guardian, the US and other wealthy countries "worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) to escalate a response, bringing military-like coordination, necessary resources, logistics, and trained personnel."
Now, said Sridhar, "we’ve had two 'America-First'" terms of President Donald Trump.
"The US is no longer part of the WHO or working multilaterally, favoring a 'go-it-alone' response," she wrote.
In Trump's second term, the president cut tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid spending. Data released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in April showed the US spent 56.9% less on foreign assistance last year after Trump dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID), cut smaller programs, and demanded that Congress rescind billions that had already been appropriated for countries and programs in need.
Ebola has become the DRC's worst-ever outbreak in just three months, wrote Sridhar, "in the context of the defunding of foreign aid, the censorship of scientists, the closure of USAID, the implosion of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a 'Make America Healthy Again' movement."
By the time officials announced that the outbreak had been detected in May, they had already recorded 246 suspected cases and 80 suspected deaths in Ituri province—suggesting that US aid and public health cuts had "undermined some of the surveillance and detection initiatives that might have helped to catch this earlier," as Jeremy Konyndyk of Refugees International said at the time.
Months after getting a significant head start in spreading throughout the population, Ebola has now been detected in six of the DRC's 26 provinces, and the country's public health institute has recorded at least 4,945 cases, with 101 detected in the 24 hours preceding Monday's announcement.
Ebola "is winning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” said the United Nations last Friday, noting that the epidemic was killing one person every 30 minutes.
Amnesty International called on the globa; community to urgently try to make up for the surveillance failures that happened earlier this year and mobilize to slow the outbreak.
"We call for global solidarity as eastern DRC faces its deadliest Ebola outbreak in the country's history," said Amnesty. "Human rights must continue to be prioritized as health workers treat the disease across the region."
The US State Department said earlier this month that it has provided $512 million in direct assistance to help respond to the outbreak—far less than the $5.4 billion the US enacted in December 2014 to fight the epidemic in West Africa.
US spending is lagging as the outbreak has become the fastest-growing in the history of the virus, as The Guardian reported Monday. The 2014 outbreak took five months to reach 1,000 deaths, but more than 2,000 people have died of Ebola in less than three months since the disease was detected.
Thomas Parisch, a public health specialist with Doctors Without Borders in the DRC, told The Guardian that the country still appears to be struggling with the limits imposed by aid cuts.
"Normally, as an outbreak progresses, the case fatality ratio should fall as contact tracing improves and patients are identified and treated earlier," said Parisch. "Instead, we’re still seeing many cases detected very late, when treatment is less likely to succeed, with many identified only after they die in the community.”
The outbreak also differs from previous epidemics in that the current Ebola infections are being caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus. There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the strain, but WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said recently that two new vaccines were being tested on people.
Lawyer and advocate Bernice King urged the public to "refuse to look away."
"Nonviolence is an active commitment to protect life," said King. "The people of the DRC deserve the world’s attention, resources, care, and solidarity."
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WHO Warns Congo's Ebola Crisis Could Soon Become Deadliest in History
"The outbreak had a big head start, it is still way ahead of us, and we are playing catch-up," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Aug 12, 2026
The World Health Organization on Wednesday announced that the outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo is on pace to become the deadliest in history.
In a press conference, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the current Ebola epidemic is already the second-largest ever recorded, and "is moving faster than any previous Ebola outbreak."
"At its current pace," Tedros added, "it is on track to eclipse the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016."
There have been more 4,400 confirmed cases and over 2,000 deaths during the current outbreak, with 80% of deaths occurring in the Ituri province in the northeastern corner of the country.
The WHO chief said he was particularly concerned that many deaths in the region are happening in communities instead of in treatment centers, which suggests there are "chains of transmission we don't know about" and need to be tracked down to contain the outbreak.
"The outbreak had a big head start," he said, "it is still way ahead of us, and we are playing catch-up."
Tedros also shared some encouraging news about the epidemic, highlighting nearly 900 Ebola patients who have recovered "even without specific therapeutics and vaccines," which he noted were still undergoing clinical trials.
"For the first time, two vaccines specifically designed against Ebola Bundibugyo virus have now entered phase one safety trials in humans," he said. "In addition, two new animal studies of the vaccine against Zaire ebolavirus—the more common species—have shown promising evidence of cross protection in animals. On that basis, WHO has recommended inclusion of the vaccine in a phase three trial, which we hope to start as soon as possible."
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'All Hands on Deck': UN Urges Expanded Response as DRC Ebola Outbreak Spreads at Record Pace
"We need to massively step up our response," said one senior UN official, while another stressed that "Ebola feeds on delay, fear, and hunger."
Jul 31, 2026
As the official death toll from the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo topped 1,500, United Nations officials called for a dramatic expansion of humanitarian assistance to combat what's now the fastest-spreading outbreak of the deadly disease ever recorded.
The DRC's Health Ministry on Friday confirmed more than 3,400 infections and at least 1,556 deaths since the outbreak was declared in May. The ministry said the fatality rate during the current epidemic is 44%.
The epidemic is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, which has spread across multiple DRC provinces, with the vast majority of cases concentrated in Ituri Province. Unlike the Zaire strain from previous outbreaks, there is currently no approved vaccine or treatment for the Bundibugyo virus.
The current epidemic has killed more people faster than any previous outbreak, including in 2014-16, when more than 28,000 infections and over 11,000 deaths were reported.
"In the last 24 hours, 50 people have died of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the number of cases is growing exponentially, doubling every 20 days,” senior United Nations aiEbola coordinator Julien Harneis said during a Wednesday press conference in New York.
“So, in support of the government, I'm calling that we step up, across the response, the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, member states,” Harneis continued. "We need to massively step up our response, be it in terms of supplies, specialized supplies like personal protective equipment, staff, specialized medical staff, and logistics as well.”
Harneis spoke at the press conference with acting UN World Food Program Executive Director Carl Skau, who said that "Ebola feeds on delay, fear, and hunger."
“Stopping this outbreak requires all hands on deck and communities at the center," he continued. "Food assistance is frontline Ebola containment. It helps families stay home, supports safe isolation, builds trust with communities, and keeps health teams moving. We know what works; what we need now is the speed and resources to scale it before this outbreak outruns the response.”
Skau noted that around 10 million people are suffering from acute food insecurity in the eastern DRC, with 3 million of those in an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)-designated "emergency"—one step away from famine.
“You cannot force people to choose between hunger and health,” he said.
Compounding the crisis, a growing number of Ebola patients are dying outside of treatment centers. Officials said that more than 60% of recent Ebola deaths have occurred in communities, increasing the risk of further transmission through unsafe caregiving and burial practices.
Health workers also continue to endure attacks by armed groups, which have forced aid organizations to suspend operations in some of the hardest-hit areas of the epidemic.
Some experts also pointed to US President Donald Trump’s ideologically driven decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization, his administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, and reduced funding for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global public health efforts as adversely affecting the response to the current Ebola epidemic, especially when compared with outbreaks in 2014 and 2019.
Meanwhile, health officials in neighboring Uganda this week declared an end to the country's Bundibugyo outbreak after no new cases were reported for a month. Twenty people were infected, and three died, in Uganda.
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'This Is a Fire': WHO Says Ebola Outbreak in DR Congo Spreading Faster Than Any Ever Seen
"The scale of the outbreak is at least two to four times the number of cases that we have found," said WHO emergencies director Chikwe Ihekweazu.
Jul 14, 2026
The Ebola outbreak sweeping the Democratic Republic of Congo is the fastest-growing ever, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday, as a shortage of funding, strained health infrastructure, and a strike by frontline medical workers threaten efforts to contain the deadly virus.
“We've seen the fastest growth in a single month since the outbreak started, and of all the Ebola outbreaks that we have managed,” WHO Health Emergencies Program executive director Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu told reporters in Geneva. “Over the last few days, we've seen some of the highest numbers of new infections in a single day."
“A few days ago, we saw over 80 cases confirmed in a single day,” he added.
Experts are particularly alarmed that the majority of new infections—roughly 80%—are coming from what the WHO called “unknown chains of transmission."
“You have to imagine that this is a fire,” Ihekweazu said. “There's something driving the fire in its heart, and it's also expanding at the same time.”
The WHO said that 95% of all new Ebola cases are in Ituri province, where the outbreak started in May, but the virus is now spreading to two new provinces, Haut-Uele and Tshopo.
The Ebola virus causes widespread and often catastrophic damage to the body’s blood vessels, immune system, and organs and typically kills between 25% and 90% of infected people, depending upon the strain of the virus and quality of available medical care.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government figures show nearly 2,000 confirmed infections and more than 700 deaths, but WHO officials say the true scale could be two to four times higher because many infections and deaths are going undetected.
Wessam Mankoula, an epidemiologist with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Ethiopia, noted during a press briefing last week that 112 healthcare workers have been infected with Ebola in DRC, 32 of whom have died.
There have also been around 20 Ebola infections and at least two deaths during the current outbreak in neighboring Uganda.
“Perhaps the most alarming finding is that many newly reported cases are individuals who died in their communities, without ever reaching a health facility and receiving care," Ihekweazu said.
There is some good news, with Ihekweazu noting that "treatment capacity now exceeds 700 beds and continues to increase each week; laboratory capacity has expanded dramatically... and contact follow-up rates are approaching 80%."
However, frontline health workers at an Ebola treatment at Rwampara General Hospital in Ituri province have gone on strike over unpaid salaries and bonuses, poor working conditions, and shortages of protective equipment.
Congolese Health Minister Roger Kamba assured workers that the government has "the means to sort this out."
Critics say US President Donald Trump’s ideologically driven decision to withdraw the US from the WHO, his administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and reduced funding for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global public health efforts have also adversely affected the response to the current Ebola epidemic, compared with 2014 and 2019 outbreaks.
The current Ebola outbreak comes in a region already ravaged by armed conflict, displacement, and other challenges. Health officials stress that getting a grip on the outbreak will require not only medical intervention but also rebuilding trust with communities rife with fear and misinformation, and ensuring health workers are paid and protected.
"This outbreak requires resources that match the scale of the challenges that we are facing," Ihekweazu stressed Tuesday. "And this is not a burden DRC can be allowed to carry alone."
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We Should Fear More Than Ebola
While we should all fear and work to stop this outbreak, we should also be willing to fear and confront the conditions that enabled its devastation.
Jun 21, 2026
As Congo faces the world’s third-largest Ebola outbreak, treatment centers have been attacked, masks and boots are running out, and entire communities are left vulnerable amid ongoing conflict and international neglect. This disaster is possible due to centuries of exploitation that amplifies the spread. The trail of inhumanity and structural violence is very scary and needs to end.
History shows that this country has been ravaged by colonial violence and foreign profiteering. Under King Leopold II of Belgium, an estimated 10 million Congolese people were murdered, mutilated, and terrorized as rubber and ivory were extracted for enormous profit. As a matter of policy and to enforce quotas, colonizers cut off limbs and heads.
Congo was also plundered by the transatlantic slave trade, which kidnapped, displaced, and enslaved millions of Congolese people.
Later, global demand for diamonds, gold, coltan, and other conflict minerals remade the region into a site of ongoing wars and labor exploitation. Much of this extraction still occurs through artisanal mining, a form of labor whereby individuals risk their lives to extract these valuable and raw natural resources under dangerous conditions.
The extreme situation in Congo did not develop in a vacuum; rather, it has formed from centuries of cruel and callous structural-based and enduring violence.
Cobalt, a rare and toxic metal essential to smartphones, electric vehicles, AI, and other technologies, reveals this contradiction at the center of our global economy. Our demand for these goods relies on the same brutal dynamics that have played out for centuries in this land: environmental harm, contamination of land and water, child labor, gender and sexual-based violence, and the exploitation of class under-resourced people of color in Congo. Wealthier people get the goods while the output biases in our systems of production allow us distance and plausible deniability in the face of untold suffering. When we look at our own commodity chains, the often hidden trails of our batteries and other electronic products in time and space before they got into our hands, we can trace many of our products to Congo. We are materially connected, whether we acknowledge it or not.
Congo has an estimated $24 trillion in untapped natural reserves. It is one of the most inherently valuable places on Earth. Yet, due to these longstanding and asymmetrical power relations, it is simultaneously extremely vulnerable. In 2020, 85.3% of the population in Congo lived on less than $3 a day. By 2026, projections estimate that fully 94.9% of the population will be at or below this international poverty threshold.
But, it doesn't have to be this way. We can do more than express fear and enforce travel bans and restrictions.
We can understand the Ebola outbreak as a medical crisis shaped by structural violence in which we are all complicit.
If we can recognize how we are connected to these systems, then we can take responsibility and action to change them. We can reinvest in funding the United Nations and support long-term healthcare infrastructure. We can become more socially and environmentally sustainable by holding corporations and governments accountable for exploitative labor and harmful environmental practices. We can demand more ethical and transparent supply chains. We can recognize that racism and environmental racism enable this disproportionate harm and take steps to do better. We can vote for people who have a world systems view, who understand that global trade, politics, and public health are connected. Leaders of this era need to understand that what we do, and how we do it, matter in life-and-death ways for people beyond our local contexts.
The extreme situation in Congo did not develop in a vacuum; rather, it has formed from centuries of cruel and callous structural-based and enduring violence. This cycle can end, if only we can align our shared values of more sustainable and equitable practices with our political will.
A virus with a potential mortality rate of 90% should concern us all. We should all fear and work to stop this outbreak. We should also be willing to fear and confront the conditions that enabled its devastation. And, we need to engage in the transformative justice required to facilitate sustainable social and environmental ways rather than those of depravity.
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Kenyan Court Rejects Plan for US Ebola Quarantine Center Amid Growing Outbreak
Kenya's largest medical professionals union, which welcomed the ruling, argued that if setting up an Ebola quarantine facility "is too dangerous for America, it is too dangerous for Kenya."
May 29, 2026
A day after US officials said Kenya had approved a request to open a quarantine center for Americans exposed to a rare strain of the Ebola virus, a court in the East African nation on Friday temporarily blocked the plan amid a growing outbreak in neighboring Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The High Court prohibited the Kenyan government from establishing or operating any Ebola exposure, quarantine, isolation, or treatment facility in the country under any agreement with the United States or any other foreign government or agency.
The court also blocked Kenya's government from allowing anyone infected with or exposed to Ebola into the country pending the outcome of the case, which was filed by the Katiba Institute, a civil rights group.
“At its core, the case is about preserving constitutional accountability, protecting public health, and ensuring that no government may place expediency above the lives and safety of the people of Kenya,” Katiba Institute executive director Nora Mbagathi said Thursday.
A 50-bed Ebola quarantine center was set to open Friday at Laikipia Air Base in Nanyuki, located approximately 125 miles north of Nairobi. The facility would have been operated by members of the US Public Health Service, a uniformed branch of the Department of Health and Human Services.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting that “we cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States."
However, US public health officials strongly criticized the plan to quarantine Americans in Kenya instead of repatriating them, with one emergency physician accusing the Trump administration of “a dramatic abdication of what we owe our own."
Elected leaders in Laikipia County welcomed the High Court's ruling. They had opposed the US quarantine center, and had asked in a joint statement prior to the decision, "Why Laikipia?"
"What does the US government know about this that they are not accepting their own affected citizens into their soil but are ready to have them elsewhere?" the officials added.
The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists, and Dentists Union (KMPDU), which had strongly opposed the quarantine center and had threatened to strike, also welcomed the High Court ruling.
"We are utterly disgusted by the government’s apparent willingness to trade national biosecurity and the lives of its citizens for foreign aid," KMPDU secretary general Davji Bhimji Attelah said in a statement Thursday, referring to the $13.5 million the Trump administration pledged for Ebola preparedness in Kenya, part of a broader $125 million US commitment toward fighting the disease.
Kenyan healthcare workers are pushing back hard against reported plans for the U.S. to establish Ebola quarantine/treatment facilities in Kenya for exposed American personnel during the ongoing Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in Central/East Africa.
[image or embed]
— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) May 28, 2026 at 11:31 AM
"We will not sit back and watch Kenya be treated as a containment colony for a lethal pathogen that we did not generate," Attelah added. “We will not tolerate an apartheid healthcare model on Kenyan soil. If it is too dangerous for America, it is too dangerous for Kenya."
Critics say President Donald Trump’s ideologically driven decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO), his administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, and reduced funding for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global public health efforts have adversely affected the response to the current Ebola epidemic, compared with 2014 and 2019 outbreaks.
The WHO said Friday that there were a total of 906 suspected Ebola cases and 223 suspected deaths reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as of Wednesday, and 125 confirmed cases in the DRC and 9 in Uganda, with 18 deaths among the confirmed cases in both countries.
Ebola—which typically kills between 25% and 90% of infected people, depending upon the strain of the virus and quality of available medical care—causes widespread and often catastrophic damage to the body’s blood vessels, immune system, and organs. The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals, including fruit bats, porcupines, and non-human primates, and then spreads between humans through direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of infected people.
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'A Dramatic Abdication': Trump Admin to Send US Citizens With Ebola Exposure to Kenya
The administration is currently setting up a facility in Kenya where US citizens will be not only monitored, but also treated, for Ebola in a major departure from previous responses.
May 27, 2026
In what one emergency physician and public health expert called “a dramatic abdication of what we owe our own,” the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to send Americans with suspected and confirmed cases of Ebola to a facility in Kenya, instead of repatriating them and treating them in the state-of-the-art quarantine and treatment facilities the US has for dangerous diseases that pose a threat to public health.
The facility is currently being set up, The New York Times reported, and several dozen Public Health Service officers—whose agency operates under the Department of Defense—are training to deploy to Kenya. The PHS also deployed to Liberia during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
"This is unbelievable and infuriating," said Dr. Craig Spencer, a professor of public health at Brown University.
According to the Times, the PHS officers in Kenya were initially going to monitor any Americans, such as healthcare workers who have gone to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to help contain the outbreak that was declared a public health emergency of international concern earlier this month. Those who showed symptoms would be transferred to European hospitals; at least seven Americans have been sent to facilities in Germany and the Czech Republic in recent weeks.
But two people familiar with the plans told the Times that the administration now plans to see to the patients' treatment in the Kanya facility as well.
"When Americans will need us most—especially those who go abroad to help end this outbreak at its source—the US government plans to send them to a hospital it is standing up from scratch in Kenya," wrote Spencer on Substack on Tuesday. "I find it incredibly difficult to believe that we can stand up a facility in the next few weeks—or even months—with the staff, the supplies, and the experience we’ve built over the past decade in more than a dozen hospitals across the US."
Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, who helped treat Ebola patients in Sierra Leone in 2014, said the plan does not make sense "from a preparedness, operational, or ethical standpoint."
"How are public health officers going to take care of persons who get sick?" said Kuppalli. "These are not persons who have experience in providing high levels of care for persons with this infection. Also, why would a PHS officer deploy knowing if they had an exposure that they wouldn’t be repatriated?"
Spencer raised concerns that the plan "could push people to hide potential exposures, or incentivize individuals or organizations to downplay those exposures. If you know that any 'high-risk' exposure will get you shipped to Kenya instead of sent home, it’s not hard to imagine people not being fully forthcoming about what may have happened to them. That is exactly backwards from how you contain a disease."
"This will also discourage Americans from joining as part of the response," he wrote. "I know of multiple healthcare providers who are considering deploying with humanitarian organizations, and we need a cavalry to help support the on-the-ground response if we have any hope of ending this outbreak. But programs and policies like this are exactly the reasons people will hesitate to sign up."
Spencer, who contracted Ebola after deploying to West Africa in 2014 and was quarantined and treated at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, emphasized that the strain of Ebola that began spreading in Ituri Province, DRC and is confirmed to have spread to Uganda does not have an approved treatment or vaccine.
"Survival depends heavily on the quality of the system and the people around you," wrote Spencer. "We have that system—I survived Ebola and am here today partly because of it—but we are choosing not to use it."
The news of the plan to send infected Americans to Kenya comes as suspected cases have ballooned to at least 906, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) latest Weekly External Situation Report, released on Sunday. The report said there have been 223 suspected deaths from the current Ebola strain, which is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, as opposed to the Zaire strain, for which a vaccine and treatments have been approved. More than 100 cases and 10 deaths have been confirmed in DRC, while seven cases and one death have been confirmed in Uganda.
The report emphasized that following up with contacts of people who have developed Ebola symptoms is a "major challenge," with just 19.3% of contacts seen by health professionals within the previous 24 hours as of May 23.
"Constraints include insecurity, movement restrictions, highly mobile populations linked to mining communities, and
difficulties tracing contacts across dispersed and cross-border populations, as well as limited trained contact tracers to
date," reads the report.
Low levels of trust in the affected communities—a major impediment to an effective response—also appear to be raising the risk of transmission. As Reuters reported on Monday, at least three attacks on Ebola treatment facilities in the northeastern DRC have caused dozens of patients to flee the hospitals.
"The attackers are reportedly motivated by a desire for the hospitals to release the bodies of deceased Ebola patients for burial—unsafe given that the virus remains transmissible after death—or by suspicion or doubt about the virus," reported Reuters.
Dr. Richard Lokudu, medical director of the Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital in Ituri, told Reuters that "there is denial of the disease within the population."
While US Secretary of State Marco Rubio blamed WHO for being "a little late" to identify that outbreak, public health experts have pointed to the Trump administration's massive cuts to foreign assistance and global public health initiatives, including the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as a major factor that likely allowed cases to spread for an extended period of time before international officials realized the outbreak was occurring.
As Common Dreams reported last week, USAID's Ebola prevention work was largely halted by the Department of Government Efficiency, run last year by tech billionaire Elon Musk—despite Musk's insistence that funding for Ebola efforts was maintained. USAID had more than 50 staffers dedicated to responding to and preparing for disease outbreaks like Ebola and Marburg virus, but DOGE's cuts reduced the workforce to about six people.
With Rubio insisting that "we can’t have Ebola cases" in the US and that keeping the disease out of US borders is the top priority for the country, the administration has invoked Title 42 to keep travelers from the DRC, Uganda, and neighboring South Sudan from entering the US if they were in any of the three countries in the previous 21 days. WHO has warned that travel bans and restrictions are not based in science.
Cuts at the CDC have also led the agency to put out a call to its workforce, seeking volunteers to conduct public health screenings at airports.
The State Department said last week it had mobilized about $23 million to help the DRC and Uganda respond to the outbreak and is "mobilizing CDC staff and resources."
But Spencer said Sunday that the administration's travel bans and focus on keeping those affected by Ebola out of US borders are "a policy you put in place when you have nothing else meaningful to add. It gives the appearance of doing ‘something’ while effectively doing nothing of value at all. And it takes away attention from where the real problem is."
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An Ebola Outbreak Made More Deadly and Dangerous Thanks to Trump
We lived through another pandemic nightmare with this president, but the warnings about what he was unleashing with his 2025 assault on USAID and CDC were not heeded. Once again, people are paying with their lives.
May 27, 2026
The current, rapidly metastasizing Ebola outbreak in East and Central Africa is a sobering reminder of how unprepared we remain for the inevitability of the next pandemic that is always sure to come. Especially when the US continues to hamstring the global efforts needed to contain deadly eruptions.
As of Sunday, May 24, there were 231 deaths and more than 1,000 cases reported, primarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), though 10 African countries are now considered at risk. “You cannot cut the systems that detect and stop outbreaks early— then act shocked when they spiral. Pathogens exploit weak systems,” said Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA, in a post on Sunday.
On Monday, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), told the world that the outbreak was “outpacing us."
The Trump administration, previously the WHO's largest funder, is the biggest reason of these failures and need to play catch up. Assistance from the US to the DRC reportedly fell from $1.4 billion in 2024 to just $21 million in 2026, said Kuppalli.
“Many of the international systems created or strengthened after earlier Ebola crises have been weakened,” the Washington Post reported last week. While the US once "played a central coordinating role in previous Ebola response efforts,” the newspaper noted, "that infrastructure has been significantly diminished following Trump administration cuts" in early 2025.
With the US pulling out of the WHO and eviscerating the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which routed money and supplies quickly, the ability to help organizations on the ground pivot from prevention "to contact tracing and communications" has vanished, said Stephanie Psaki, US coordinator for global health security in the Biden administration.
The Trump administration has even barred key infectious disease officials from communicating with the WHO. “The whole disaster response capability at USAID no longer exists,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, the former lead of USAID’s Ebola response team.
On May 20, National Nurses United, issued a statement admonishing the Trump administration for making everyone less safe in the face of the outbreak.
“Nurses understand the life-or-death importance of prevention, and when it comes to infectious diseases, that means having strong infrastructure in place to rapidly detect and respond to new outbreaks before they are out of control," said NNU. "The Trump administration has purposely taken a sledgehammer to that infrastructure over the past year.”
Nurses are prominent among the health workers, and health policy researchers, who have long warned of the danger of sudden outbreaks that can lead to massive, deadly pandemics.
“The arrival of the next great pandemic has always been a ‘when,’ not an ‘if,’ and firewalls for stopping it are getting thinner,” journalists Conn Hallinan and Carl Bloice wrote in 2005 in the California Nurses Association’s Revolution magazine. That piece was written amid concern for the spreading of avian flu, but the warning signs of a failing prevention and response system were already evident. “Public health budgets in this nation and across the globe are being systematically starved of funding,” they wrote.
Four years later, H1NI, also known as swine flu, brought the fears to life. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated there were 60.8 million cases and an estimated range of between 151,700 to 575,400 deaths worldwide its first year alone. Deborah Burger, RN, then president of the California Nurses Association, warned, “We should learn the lessons of the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, one of which was the enormous mitigating effect on mortality of adequate nursing care.”
Those working on the frontlines to care for infected patients are particularly vulnerable. Speaking to Hallinan and Bloice, University of Minnesota researcher Michael Osterholm predicted back in 2005 that “health care workers would become ill and die at rates similar to, or even higher than in the general public" in the face of a pandemic.
On July 17, 2009, Karen Ann Hays, a cancer care RN at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, CA near Sacramento, and a healthy triathlete and marathon runner, became the first health care worker in California to die of H1N1. Only after the union announced plans for a one-day strike affecting 16,000 RNs in California and Nevada, did then-Gov. Schwarzenegger and major hospitals implement new safety protocols.
In March 2014, the largest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus was reported in West Africa. By August, the WHO declared a public health emergency as it spread in Africa, and reached Europe and the US. As noted, the outbreak was particularly dangerous for healthcare workers exposed to Ebola patients.
Recalling the spread of H1N1, NNU urged federal, state, and local officials to adhere to strict infectious disease guidelines to protect patients, healthcare workers, and the public. Seeing little done by September 2014, more than 1,000 nurses held a march and die-in during a convention in Las Vegas to alert the public to inadequate US preparations to stop the spread of Ebola and similar pandemics.
Days later, a patient recently returned to the US from Liberia, was diagnosed with Ebola in a Dallas hospital and died. Within two weeks, two Dallas nurses in that hospital, Nina Pham and Amber Vincent, were infected. NNU called on President Barack Obama to “invoke his executive authority” to order all US hospitals to meet the highest “uniform, national standards and protocols” to “safely protect patients, all healthcare workers and the public.”
Burger testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the lack of mandated protections for nurses and patients. “The risk of exposure to the population at large merely starts with front-line caregivers like registered nurses, physicians and other healthcare workers—it does not end there," Burger told lawmakers. "If we cannot protect our nurses and other healthcare workers, we cannot protect anyone.”
A two-day strike the next month at 86 hospitals and clinics over the lack of Ebola preparedness again helped spur needed measures. Within weeks, the federal government, and some states, including California, enacted reforms to improve pandemic protections in US facilities, and as NNU was also urging, escalated support for global protections in West Africa.
Cuba was in the forefront of providing direct frontline care in West Africa in 2014, sending 165 Cuban nurses and doctors, risking their own lives. At a time today with the US threatening an invasion of Cuba following months of an illegal blockade that has had a debilitating impact on its health care system, it’s worth recalling that as recently as 2024, Cuba had dispatched more than 20,000 medical staff to more than 50 countries in humanitarian missions.
When Trump first came into office, he ignored the preparedness lessons. Beginning the morning after his 2017 inauguration, Trump systematically dismantled a pandemic infrastructure response program put in place by Obama. By January 2020, when the WHO had begun warning of the outbreak known as Covid-19, the Trump administration was caught flatfooted. As the initial US infections appeared, Trump’s first public statement that month was this: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
In contrast, NNU had already begun to press Trump to implement national and safety protocols and measures, with public accountability. Instead, Trump’s response was months of denials, deflections, and promotion of false cures while dismissing the best protective measures. By June 2020, with 110,000 dead Americans, Trump insisted, “It is dying out, it’s going to fade away.”
By February 2024, the US counted nearly 7 million cases, and over 1.1 million deaths. So many lives could have been saved with advance preparedness and rapid implementation of the proper safety measures.
Hospital employers and numerous state governments, especially in GOP-controlled states, took their lead from the Trump administration to slow walk or ignore critical protections. Workers in essential front-line occupations, from public transportation to nursing homes and hospitals, as well as lower income jobs in grocery and drug stores, poultry and other meat processing, and service industries generally, paid a high price, especially workers of color.
Through August 2023, the Covid death count hit 5,753 for health care workers overall, including 501 RNs. Filipinos, 4 percent of all RNs, accounted for 21 percent of the deaths among nurses.
In the 2014 outbreak, 881 doctors, nurses, and midwives were infected in West Africa, and 513 died. The crisis created a severe shortage of healthcare workers across the region.
By May 21 in the current Ebola outbreak, at least four health worker deaths have been reported in the DRC. Three Red Cross volunteers have also died. One doctor evacuated from the DRC, waiting in a specialized hospital room in Prague to see whether he has Ebola, said his former colleagues in the DRC are beginning to die of the deadly disease.
The International Rescue Committee warned on Tuesady that thus outbreak is spreading faster than responders can contain it and risks becoming "the deadliest on record."
As the NNU warned last week, neither the nation nor the world can afford another public health mismanagement disaster from the like of Trump. “Nurses have already lived through one bungled, global health emergency response during the first Trump administration," said the union, "and we are appalled to know that when it comes to Ebola, hantavirus, or any other infectious disease, the United States under Donald Trump is now even less prepared than in 2020."Keep ReadingShow Less
With Epidemic 'Outpacing' Response, WHO Chief Warns Ebola Outbreak Will 'Get Worse Before It Gets Better'
"The delay in detecting the outbreak means that we are now playing catch-up with a very fast-moving epidemic."
May 25, 2026
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Monday that the swiftly spreading Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda "will get worse before it gets better," as a deadly delay in detecting infections has responders to the epidemic "playing catch-up."
"The outbreak is spreading rapidly," Tedros said during a virtual ministerial meeting on the matter. "So far, 101 cases have been confirmed in DRC, with 10 confirmed deaths. But we know the epidemic in DRC is much larger. There are now more than 900 suspected cases and 220 suspected deaths."
"Countries bordering DRC are at especially high risk and should take immediate action," he asserted. "In Uganda, there are five confirmed cases and one death."
Tedros pointed out that "there are several aspects of this outbreak that make it especially challenging."
"First, the delay in detecting the outbreak means that we are now playing catch-up with a very fast-moving epidemic," he said. "We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment, the epidemic is outpacing us."
"Second, as you know, the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu are highly insecure, with intensified fighting in recent months, causing more than 100,000 people to be newly displaced," the WHO chief continued. "There is also significant distrust of outside authorities among the local population. In the past week, there have been two security incidents at health facilities."
"WHO is fully committed to working under the leadership of the governments of DRC and Uganda, side by side with Africa [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and all other partners," Tedros added. "We will not rest until we bring this outbreak under control."
Ebola—which typically kills between 25% and 90% of infected people, depending upon the strain of the virus and quality of available medical care—causes widespread and often catastrophic damage to the body’s blood vessels, immune system, and organs.
Critics say US President Donald Trump's ideologically driven decision to withdraw the US from the WHO, his administration's dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and reduced funding for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's global public health efforts have adversely affected the response to the current Ebola epidemic, compared with 2014 and 2019 outbreaks.
After US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the WHO was "a little late" in identifying new Ebola infections, Tedros retorted that "we don’t replace the country’s work, we only support them," and suggested that Rubio's comments could be rooted in "a lack of understanding" of the agency and countries' responsibilities.
While Rubio said that “our number-one objective on Ebola, before anything else... has to be, we can’t have it affect the United States,” public health experts warn that Trump administration actions could make it more likely that the virus will make its way to the country.
There is currently no confirmed CDC director, Food and Drug Administration commissioner, or surgeon general.
Taking aim at Trump's evisceration of key public health agencies and programs, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said last week: “Ebola does not wait for bureaucratic reorganizations. It spreads when surveillance systems are weakened, health workers are laid off, clinics lack protective equipment, and communities lose the trusted partners who help detect and contain outbreaks before they become public health emergencies."
"This is the perfect storm President Trump created," she continued. "He recklessly dismantled USAID, withheld and slashed other United States assistance to the region, fired critical staff, and created global health chaos. This is not efficiency. It is dangerous neglect."
"The United States spent years building the relationships, supply chains, laboratories, and community health networks that help stop deadly diseases at their source," DeLauro added. "The Trump administration tore into that capacity and now wants to pretend the consequences were unforeseeable.”
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