An Ebola outbreak spreading through eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is a “canary in the coal mine” for the global danger posed by UK and US aid cuts, a former British Africa minister has warned, as health workers scramble to contain a virus strain that has no approved vaccine.
Rory Stewart, who served as the UK’s Africa minister during the last major Ebola outbreak in 2018, said the connection between the cuts implemented by Donald Trump and the British government and the current outbreak was “very strong”. He told BBC Radio 4 that pandemic preparedness required “lots of people on the ground” in places like the DRC or Uganda who could detect cases, quarantine patients and prepare responses, and that “all the infrastructure behind that is being undermined at the moment”. He added: “That’s a real threat, of course, to the world.”
The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Jean Kaseya, said more than 390 suspected cases and at least 100 reported deaths had been recorded in the DRC’s eastern Ituri province. According to Africa CDC figures, there have been approximately 395 suspected cases and 106 deaths in the DRC, with two cases and one death in neighbouring Uganda. Cases have also been detected elsewhere in the DRC, including the capital Kinshasa. Uganda has reported two deaths and two confirmed cases. Rwanda and South Sudan are now on high alert. A small number of Americans directly affected by the outbreak are being withdrawn from the area, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said, and an American doctor is among the confirmed cases in Bunia, Ituri province.
Jean Pierre Badombo, the former mayor of Mongbwalu, a mining town in Ituri at the epicentre of the outbreak, said people began falling ill in April after a large open-casket funeral procession. “After that, we experienced a cascade of deaths,” he told Reuters.
Aid cuts and pandemic preparedness
Stewart said the outbreak should serve as a “wake-up call” about the “dangerous” threat posed by cuts to foreign aid. “I’m not trying to start a scare in Britain around this outbreak, but what I’m hoping will happen is people will see this and realise how dangerous this is, and how much risk we’re taking by not dealing with it more directly,” he said.
US foreign assistance spending fell by nearly 57 per cent after the Trump administration dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which had financed laboratory networks, disease surveillance programmes and emergency response capacity across Africa. Earlier this month the administration began plans to divert a further $2 billion in global health funding to cover the costs of shutting down USAID operations overseas. The reduction in US foreign aid has been linked to potential increases in malaria cases and deaths, polio cases, and new tuberculosis cases. USAID had been instrumental in global health successes including eradicating smallpox and combating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; its dismantling is estimated to have already caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, with two-thirds being children, according to research.
In the UK, billions of pounds are being cut from aid spending as the budget falls from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) to fund increased defence spending — the lowest level since 1999. The reduction is estimated to result in £6 billion less in aid spending. Evidence from previous UK aid reductions shows clinics close, medicines run out and preventable illnesses rise. The UK’s aid spending already fell from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent of GNI in 2021 and is set to drop further to 0.3 per cent by 2027.
Jeremy Konyndyk, a former USAID official who led the agency’s Covid-19 response, wrote on X that the dismantling of US-funded health programming in the DRC “is likely a big factor in why this outbreak was detected so late”. He warned that the World Health Organisation (WHO), which had mounted one of its largest-ever deployments to help contain the 2018 DRC outbreak, was now “reeling” after Trump withdrew all US funding, cutting the agency’s emergency budget for health emergencies by 37 per cent and forcing it to lay off thousands of staff. “Its emergency contingency fund is close to empty. Tough starting point to mount a major response,” he said.
The outbreak was not declared until 15 May 2026 because initial laboratory tests used cartridges designed for the wrong Ebola strain, causing a critical three-week delay in detection and response. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Centre at Brown University, said the outbreak bore “the cumulative effects of cuts to a number of global health programmes, which have reduced the people and attention given to public health threats”. Lawrence Gostin, university professor at Georgetown, agreed the situation showed “all the characteristics of weakened health systems, including very late detection, ongoing uncontrolled spread and deep distrust of public health workers”.
Experts from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board have warned that the chances of another global pandemic similar to Covid-19 are increasing as infectious disease outbreaks become more frequent and damaging.
The Bundibugyo strain
The WHO declared the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern” over the weekend, and confirmed on 14 May that the strain involved was Bundibugyo virus disease — a rare variant of Ebola first identified in Uganda in 2007. It has caused only two previous outbreaks, one in Uganda in 2007 and another in the DRC in 2012, neither within the last decade. Its epidemiology remains poorly understood.
There is no approved vaccine or targeted treatment for this strain, though early supportive care is crucial. The case fatality rate ranges from 25 per cent to 50 per cent. The WHO has warned the true scale of infections is likely far greater than official figures suggest. Jennifer Nuzzo said the relative lack of treatments and scientific understanding meant researchers were “flying blind and fighting the virus with both arms tied behind our backs.”
The WHO has sent five tonnes of medical supplies to the DRC and released $500,000 from its contingency fund. The Africa CDC has declared the outbreak a Continental Security Public Health Emergency, deployed emergency response teams, and called for coordinated continental action, with Jean Kaseya saying “Africa’s health security is indivisible”. The International Rescue Committee has launched an emergency response, and the US CDC has implemented a Title 42 order banning non-US citizens from entering the country if they have recently been in the DRC, South Sudan, or Uganda.
