Health workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are battling a rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola after 482 suspected cases and about 116 deaths were reported since April, while Uganda has recorded two cases and one death. The outbreak has already crossed at least two countries, and experts say it may have been moving for months before it was fully recognized.
The World Health Organization declared the situation a public health emergency of international concern before the usual committee convened, underscoring the speed and seriousness of the spread. Kristian Andersen said it might have been going on for a few months, a warning that comes as officials also raised the possibility of spread to neighboring South Sudan.
The numbers matter because this is not a routine flare-up. The Bundibugyo variant has caused only two outbreaks in recent decades, but it has no cure and no vaccine. That leaves containment, tracing contacts and building trust in clinics as the main defenses, and those defenses are now under strain in a region where health systems are already thin.
Matthew Kavanagh said the response is happening with zero notice and described the outbreak as disruptive to the country’s basic activities. He called the collapse of support a self-inflicted wound that the administration has really brought on us, adding that it is deeply foreseeable when you gut public health surveillance and you gut public health capacity.
The strain on the response is tied to wider cuts in U.S. global health work. In the past year, USAID has been dismantled, thousands of staff at U.S. health agencies were laid off, communications stalled and key scientific research was canceled. U.S. foreign assistance to the DRC dropped from $1.4bn in 2024 to $431m in 2025 and to $21m so far this year, while assistance to Uganda fell from $674m in 2024 to $377m in 2025 and to a negative $1.2m so far in 2026.
The United States also announced it would leave the WHO and end $130m in funding, a move that cost the organization 2,371 jobs. Under the second Trump administration, Ebola response teams were suspended and health centers and medical supplies were dramatically cut back. Andersen said the country is not just leaving the table but completely cutting itself out of the conversation, and he said the government is upending the table.
The concern reaches beyond this outbreak. The DRC is one of the most vulnerable health systems in the world and the second-biggest recipient of USAID funding, which makes the aid cuts more than a budget fight. What is Ebola virus in this setting? It is a fast-moving threat that demands lab support, field teams and steady financing, just when the systems built to stop it have been weakened.
A world-class Ebola lab in Frederick, Maryland, with the National Institutes of Health was designed for exactly this scenario, a reminder that the tools exist to help respond if they are used. But with assistance reduced, response teams suspended and scientific channels disrupted, the question is no longer whether the outbreak is serious. It is whether the world is prepared to meet it at the scale it now demands.
