By Siddhi Oberoi

A new Ebola outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo virus, has been unfolding in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda since May 2026. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has described it as “spreading substantially faster than previous Ebola outbreaks,” now ranking as the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record [1]. Where earlier outbreaks took 235 days to reach 1,000 confirmed cases, this one crossed the threshold in just 40. Deaths have climbed just as steeply: 100 people died in the first week of July alone. Limited healthcare infrastructure, ongoing conflict in the region and population displacement have compounded the difficulty of containing the disease, as the virus spreads through contact with infected body fluids [1].

On May 17 2026, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, stopping short of labelling it a pandemic [2]. But the world confronting this crisis is, by most measures, worse equipped to handle it than it was before Covid-19. According to Thomas Bollyky, director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, “we are in a much worse place because of the hostility to public health and global health that now exists after Covid”. The new global health system that has emerged since the previous pandemic is, surprisingly, more fragile than ever [3]. 

A “broken global response”, write J. Stephen Morrison and Michaela Simoneau at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is an essential reality to keep in mind for managing DRC’s Ebola crisis. The legacy of Covid-19 has not been a strengthening of the international response system, but geopolitical fracturing and profound weakening of “the WHO, the United States, other major donors, UN agencies and international NGOs” [4]. The US withdrawal from the WHO, ordered by President Trump in January 2025, has cost the agency 18% of its financial backing and nearly a quarter of its workforce – around 2,000 people [5]. That retreat has been compounded by sweeping budget and staff cuts across the US government, including the shuttering of the US Agency for International Development [6]. The US is not alone: Germany, the UK, Japan, and France – among the world’s largest donors of development assistance – have all pulled back foreign aid spending as well, driving a historic annual contraction in global aid provision between 2024 and 2025 [7].

Drawing a straight line from that retreat to any single epidemic is as difficult as attributing one weather event to climate change [3]. But the timeline of this outbreak is suggestive. The earliest estimates place the index case, the first patient, around late March. By the time of its international confirmation by the WHO in May, there were 246 suspected cases and 65 suspected deaths, indicating a delay in detection. Yet if we were to assume a pace of spread similar to previous Ebola outbreaks and take into account its current size, it is likely that the outbreak started up to 6 months ago [8]. 

Weeks or months of undetected Ebola circulation amount to what one analysis calls “a collective failure of global health security”, likely rooted in the erosion of disease-surveillance funding [8]. And because no therapy or vaccine yet exists for Bundibugyo, containment has depended entirely on the most basic tools available: detection, contact tracing and quarantine. In a region lacking adequate healthcare infrastructure and engulfed in active conflict, even that primitive approach amounts to an enormous and resource-intensive logistical undertaking. Congolese health workers report the practical consequences of resource shortfalls, including shortages of basic PPE, empty pharmacy shelves and health facilities that have gone unstaffed [3].

Yet institutional fragility is only part of the story. The trauma of the Covid-19 lockdowns left society distrustful of scientists and institutions. That distrust has fueled, for example, a resurgence of diseases that were once relics of the past in the developed world, such as measles and whooping cough. In DRC, public distrust recently led to attacks on Ebola healthcare workers and the burning of hospital tents used to isolate suspected patients, driven in part by the perception of Ebola as a disease imported by “Westerners” [9]. A small minority go further and dismiss Ebola as a hoax altogether, echoing Covid-19 denialism [10]. 

Despite setbacks, an international response has taken shape. The WHO and the Africa Centres for Disease Control have announced a 6-month joint plan to address the outbreak and raise $518 million for affected African countries through November 2026 [11]. The US, now the largest individual contributor of aid, has expedited emergency funding as part of its response which includes monetary commitments towards global health organisations, vaccine development and regional humanitarian assistance [4, 5].

However, as of mid-July, confirmed cases in DRC had passed 2,100, with more than 800 deaths; WHO officials have said they cannot yet describe the outbreak as stabilizing, and roughly 80% of new cases are emerging from transmission chains that investigators haven’t been able to trace [12, 13]. The current Ebola outbreak presents one of the first major tests of the weakened post-Covid global health system. It is worth watching closely to study the long-term impacts of the unraveling apparatus of international cooperation.

Edited by Maria Antonietta Fiocchi.

References

Cover image: European Commission DG ECHO. (2014). Ebola response [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/eu_echo/14775240901

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Ebola disease outbreak: Situation summary. https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html
2. World Health Organization. (2026, May 17). Epidemic of Ebola disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda determined a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern
3. Financial Times. (2026). Why Ebola came back – and a warning for the next pandemic. https://www.ft.com/content/e6e31057-aded-4109-9f5e-6808c7737b0d
4. Center for Strategic and International Studies. (n.d.). Managing DRC’s Ebola crisis. https://www.csis.org/analysis/managing-drcs-ebola-crisis
5. Reuters. (2026, August 5). US will nearly double financial commitment to Ebola response. U.S. News & World Report. https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2026-08-05/us-will-nearly-double-financial-commitment-to-ebola-response
6. The Guardian. (2025, November 19). World Health Organisation to cut jobs due to US withdrawing funding. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/19/world-health-organisation-to-cut-jobs-due-to-us-withdrawing-funding
7. Center for Strategic and International Studies. (n.d.). A new era of health security. https://www.csis.org/analysis/new-era-health-security#h2-a-perilous-moment
8. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2026, April). A historic decline in foreign aid: Preliminary 2025 ODA data. https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/data-explainers/2026/04/a-historic-decline-in-foreign-aid-preliminary-2025-oda-data.html
9. Think Global Health. (2026). Charting Ebola responses: How 2026 stacks up after aid cuts. https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/charting-ebola-responses-how-2026-stacks-up-after-aid-cuts
10. Le Monde. (2026, May 27). Some Congolese believe Westerners created this disease in the DRC: Communities mistrust medical workers responding to the Ebola virus epidemic. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/article/2026/05/27/some-congolese-believe-westerners-created-this-disease-in-the-drc-communities-mistrust-medical-workers-responding-to-the-ebola-virus-epidemic_6753853_124.html
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12. Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. (2026). WHO, Africa CDC announce joint Ebola response plan. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/ebola/who-africa-cdc-announce-joint-ebola-response-plan
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14. National Public Radio. (2026, July 15). Ebola deaths rise in Congo as outbreak continues. https://www.npr.org/2026/07/15/g-s1-133630/ebola-congo-deaths