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What is unfolding in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is not just a localized health emergency; it is a warning sign of a deeper and more dangerous failure in global health. We must act.

A year ago, Dr. Manenji Mangundu, Oxfam country director in the DRC, painted a bleak picture of the situation. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had been funding 70 per cent of humanitarian aid in eastern DRC. When this funding was abruptly halted by a Trump executive order in January 2025, health providers were forced to shut down. For the people who relied on them, the suffering was immediate.

At the time, Dr. Mangundu was reporting a marked rise in cases of cholera and mpox. Even more alarming, he described the DRC as an “Ebola reservoir.”

At a time when the DRC’s institutions were collapsing under prolonged and violent conflict, mass displacement and a staggering humanitarian catastrophe, the international community turned its back on the country. When I visited in July 2025, women in devastated eastern villages were asking me how they were supposed to survive other than through prostitution. The only clinic in one village, which had a single bed, was about to close.

And now, a strain of Ebola for which there is neither a vaccine nor a treatment is spreading rapidly in the DRC and neighbouring........

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