Ebola, hantavirus show world’s riskpreparedness lagging: pandemic expert
By AFP
May 20, 2026
'Global solidarity remains extremely important', said Helen Clark - Copyright AFP Fabrice COFFRINI
Nina LARSON
The deadly hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks show that while the response to declared public health crises has improved, awareness of pandemic risks still lags, a leading pandemic expert warned Tuesday.
Over six years after the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 pandemic, global efforts to revamp public health crisis response have improved the reaction to the hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks, said Helen Clark, a former New Zealand prime minister and the co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
“The new international health regulations are working,” she told AFP in an interview in Geneva.
As soon as the alert was sounded last Friday over the new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and once the world learned a few weeks ago of the rare hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship in the Atlantic, “the response has gone quite well”, she said.
“Our issue is now really upstream from that,” she said, insisting that far more work needed to go into identifying risks and how “these outbreaks get away”.
“I think we need a lot more knowledge around risk-informed preparedness,” she said, urging more focus on knowing your risk and “what could crop up”, and “be ready to deal with that”.
“Those basic issues of surveillance, early detection… We’re not there yet.”
Clark said the hantavirus species behind the cruise ship outbreak that triggered a global health scare after three people died was known to be endemic in the area of Argentina where the ship departed from.
“But we’re not clear how much was known about that by ships who depart regularly from there,” she said.
Meanwhile, the outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola believed to have killed more than 130 people in a remote province of DRC seems to have spread under the radar for weeks, with tests focused on another strain showing up negative.
“How could this have gone for four to six weeks, … spreading while not getting the testing results that we needed to show that it was a particular variant?” Clark asked.
She called for thorough investigation of “the chain of events here, and what we can learn from it, and what it says about the capacities we need”.
– ‘Perfect storm’ –
Clark highlighted that the Ebola outbreak especially had laid bare the dire impact dramatic global aid cuts had on disease prevention efforts.
“There’s a perfect storm,” she warned, pointing to how countries had been “very suddenly expected to make up a lot of investment in the health system which previously came from donors”.
“With the best will in the world, the poorest and most fragile countries just haven’t got money sitting in the bank to do that, so things will get neglected across a range of areas.”
Clark insisted that “global solidarity remains extremely important”.
“We’re talking global public goods,” she stressed, pointing to a confirmed Ebola case in a US national and how hantavirus had “popped up in places where people (disembarked) from the ship”.
“We’re in this together, and so we have to look to ways of financing preparedness or response which reflect our shared interests.”
Watching Ebola Return
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of Ebola virus particles (green) both budding and attached to the surface of infected VERO E6 cells (orange). Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Credit: NIAID.
As I write, news is breaking of at least six Americans exposed to Ebola. I’m no doctor, epidemiologist, or public-health expert, but I have been following closely this latest Ebola outbreak through reports from the WHO, Africa CDC, international news outlets, and disease specialists.
What concentrates the mind is how outbreaks spread, how governments respond, and how political and humanitarian conditions can shape a crisis long before most of the world hears about it.
The current outbreak appears to have begun in Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. WHO says it was first alerted on 5 May 2026 to a high-mortality illness in Mongbwalu Health Zone. Early testing reportedly failed to detect Ebola because the first laboratory tests came back negative. Further investigation and more detailed testing later confirmed the rarer Bundibugyo strain of the virus on 15 May.
By 16 May, WHO was reporting eight laboratory-confirmed cases, 246 suspected cases, and 80 suspected deaths in Ituri, across at least Bunia, Rwampara, and Mongbwalu health zones. Uganda had also confirmed two imported cases among people who had travelled from the DRC, including one death. WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern—a PHEIC—on 17 May, while making clear that this is not the same as declaring a pandemic.
What struck me personally is that confirmed cases had reached Kampala itself. Kampala is Uganda’s capital, in the south-central part of the country near Lake Victoria, and I was there not that long ago. Even then, it was clear how much pressure the country was under from displacement, migration, and the wider refugee crisis.
One of the reasons Ebola can be difficult to catch early is that it often begins by looking like something far more ordinary: malaria, flu, or another feverish illness. Early symptoms include fatigue, muscle pain, headache, and sore throat. As the disease progresses, patients can develop vomiting, diarrhoea, organ dysfunction, and sometimes internal or external bleeding.
There is also a broader dimension that is hard to ignore. Some people have linked the outbreak to recent cuts in USAID and other international health funding. To be clear, there is no evidence that funding cuts caused Ebola itself. Ebola originates through animal-to-human spillover and then spreads through bodily fluids. But reduced funding can weaken the systems designed to stop outbreaks from escalating once they begin: surveillance networks, laboratories, contact tracing, transport, staffing, protective equipment, and community outreach.
Scientists believe fruit bats are a likely natural reservoir for Ebola viruses, though the virus can infect other mammals too, including monkeys and apes. Human infections often begin through contact with infected animals, such as handling bushmeat, butchering wildlife, or exposure to blood and bodily fluids in forest regions where the virus circulates naturally.
After that, Ebola spreads person-to-person through direct contact with blood, vomit, diarrhoea, saliva, sweat, semen, contaminated bedding, needles, medical equipment, and so on. Ebola is not primarily airborne like Covid or measles. Casual passing contact is usually not enough to spread it.
Where outbreaks become truly dangerous is when healthcare systems start failing. If hospitals lack protective equipment, testing is delayed, contact tracing breaks down, or people avoid treatment centres out of fear or distrust, the virus gains momentum. Conflict and displacement make everything harder. That is one reason eastern Congo has struggled so repeatedly with Ebola outbreaks over the years.
So should the rest of the world be concerned?
Yes.
For Central and East Africa, the concern is genuinely high. Population movement in the region is intense, mining and transport corridors increase transmission risk, and conflict in eastern Congo complicates response efforts. Unlike the Zaire strain, there is currently no licensed vaccine or specific approved treatment for Bundibugyo virus disease.
Globally, the concern is more moderate. Ebola is watched carefully because infected travellers can carry it internationally, and early symptoms can resemble more common illnesses. But Ebola is much harder to spread globally than airborne viruses like influenza or Covid-19. People are usually not infectious until symptoms begin, which makes isolation and contact tracing far more effective.
For Europe and North America, though the US government was in the process of trying to get its US citizens to a safe place for quarantine, the current risk remains low. Imported cases are possible, but sustained community spread is unlikely in countries with strong isolation protocols, infection-control systems, laboratory capacity, and contact-tracing infrastructure.
The deeper concern is less about Ebola suddenly sweeping through Europe or America, and more about whether weakened international surveillance systems make outbreaks harder to detect early enough to stop them regionally.
And Ebola is frightening for good reason. Depending on the strain and access to care, fatality rates can be very high. WHO notes that previous Bundibugyo outbreaks had case fatality rates of around 30% to 50%. During major outbreaks, healthcare systems can effectively collapse. Hospitals become overwhelmed, healthcare workers die, and routine treatment for other diseases breaks down as resources are diverted toward crisis response.
The 2014–16 West Africa epidemic became catastrophic partly because fragile health systems were overwhelmed before international help fully arrived.
At a broader ethical level, outbreaks like this expose something fundamental about how interconnected human beings really are. A virus emerging in a remote forest region can eventually become a regional or global concern. That means global cooperation is not just charity or idealism. It is practical self-interest.
There is also a moral argument—remember those?—that wealthier nations and stronger institutions carry some responsibility to support weaker health systems, scientific research, surveillance networks, and emergency response capacity, because no country is completely insulated from global threats. Isn’t preventing avoidable suffering one of the clearest expressions of human solidarity?
At the same time, of course, experts increasingly worry about the role of public trust. In an outbreak, as we discovered over COVID, trust is not a soft issue. It determines whether people report symptoms, accept isolation, cooperate with contact tracers, allow safe burials, and believe public-health advice. Without trust, even the best technical response in the world can fail.
Bennito L. Kelty
May 19, 2026
RAW STORY
Ebola virus magnified (Shutterstock.com)
A humanitarian group says that funding cuts by the Trump administration left a region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo "dangerously exposed" to a rare strain of Ebola that has killed more than a hundred people, according to a new report.
The International Rescue Committee told Politico that losing funding under the Trump administration in March 2025 forced it to reduce early-warning systems to detect Ebola in the region.
"Funding cuts have left the region dangerously exposed," Heather Reoch Kerr, the IRC's Congo country director, told Politico. "The sharp rise in reported cases over the last few days reflects the reality that surveillance systems are now catching up with transmission that has likely been occurring for some time."
With the most recent outbreak of Ebola, more than 500 people are suspected to be infected with the virus, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO declared the outbreak, which started in April, a public health emergency over the weekend.
The strain spreading is Bundibugyo, a rare variant for which no licensed vaccine or targeted treatment exists.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday that the "scale and speed" of the current outbreak is alarming, according to Politico.
Kerr explained that the IRC shut down "health and preparedness work" in three sections of the Ituri Province, which is "the epicenter of the outbreak" in the DRC right now, Politico reported.
hantavirus hunt
By AFP
May 18, 2026
A team of scientists in southern Argentina set up to 150 traps to catch rodents potentially carrying hantavirus, according to a local healthcare source - Copyright AFP JUAN MABROMATA
Scientists attempting to determine whether or not hantavirus is present in Argentina’s Ushuaia on Monday laid the very first traps to catch rodents potentially carrying the disease, AFP journalists observed.
The MV Hondius cruise ship, where a hantavirus outbreak on board killed three people and triggered a global health scare, set sail from the city at Argentina’s southernmost tip on April 1.
Beginning Monday, biologists from Buenos Aires are spending several days setting traps at various locations on the southern island of Tierra del Fuego to analyze whether the captured rodents carry the Andes strain of the virus, the only one known to spread between people.
The rare respiratory disease, for which there is no cure, typically spreads through the urine, feces and saliva of infected rodents.
Biologists and national park staff wearing masks and gloves set up dozens of small rectangular metal cages on trails outside Ushuaia as night fell.
Others were placed in Tierra del Fuego National Park, 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) of forests, lakes and mountains located 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the city.
The team set up to 150 traps, according to a local healthcare source.
Provincial officials insist that Tierra del Fuego has not had a case of hantavirus since its reporting became mandatory 30 years ago — unlike in provinces to the north, such as Rio Negro and Chubut.
Local scientists believe it is more likely that the infections aboard the cruise ship occurred in another region.
Two of the vessel’s hantavirus victims — a married Dutch couple — had traveled extensively in Argentina for four months, with forays into Chile and Uruguay.
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