Spread too thin: Africa’s next Ebola outbreak
episodePreviously titled “Spread too thin: West Africa’s next Ebola outbreak” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
Transcript
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Economist.
Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. Today on the show, profiling the polling favorite for Britain's next Prime Minister and the warm, cozy, useless world of celebrity book clubs.
But first
On Sunday, the World Health Organization made official what had been brewing in headlines for days.
I declared a public health emergency of the international concern over the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has already spread to Uganda.
What did the WHO declare about the new Ebola outbreak in the DRC?
Ebola is, to put it mildly, a horrible pathogen. Spread only by contact with bodily fluids, it causes a hemorrhagic fever that can have a huge fatality rate. That WHO designation signals a more complicated outbreak that demands a more coordinated response. Africa had been getting better at that kind of response. But this time, things are different.
What we know so far is that this Ebola outbreak seems to be shaping up to be the worst since twenty fourteen, sixteen, when more than ten thousand people died in West Africa.
John McDermott is our Chief Africa correspondent.
Initial data suggests that more than a hundred people have died in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, perhaps around four hundred cases. But these are almost certainly underestimates and it's safe to assume that the virus has probably been spreading for a few weeks in eastern DRC and could well be in Burindi, Rwanda, South Sudan, in addition to other parts of the region.
And I'm sure many listeners will remember that big outbreak from around a decade ago. How has response changed in the interim?
Africa has gotten a lot better at dealing with Ebola. I mean, this is the seventeenth outbreak on the continent over the past fifty years. And there are basically two reasons for that. The first is thanks to scientific brilliance, there are now vaccines for some of the Ebola strains, which allows you to create a kind of proverbial ring fence around outbreaks. And then the second is that on the ground teams of community health workers have gotten a lot better at building trust with local communities, explaining how the virus spreads, and then ultimately quarantining and dealing with outbreaks like this.
And so in that sense, Africa is very ready for this outbreak.
Not quite, because those two positive developments that we've seen over the past decade or so are not as apparent in this particular instance. So the strain that has emerged in Eastern DRC over the past few weeks, the Bundy Bujo strain, there is no known vaccine against it, although there may be some experiments done in the next few weeks. And then the second issue. Issue is that the kind of on-the-ground response will also be more problematic, partly because testing is more difficult. You can't do the rapid genetic testing that we are all familiar with because of the COVID pandemic here. That strain is not amenable to it.
Why is the current Ebola strain harder to control than previous ones?
But also because there are just fewer healthcare workers to throw at the problem and the community based response will just be more problematic than it has been in recent outbreaks.
And how much of that shortfall of health workers on the ground has to do with the withdrawal of US funding that we've talked about on the show so many times?
Look, I think it's something of a perfect storm. So the outbreaks in the east of the DRC, where I actually was a few weeks ago reporting another story. And in the East, there is very little state presence. The capital of Congo is two thousand kilometers away. And there's this constellation of armed groups which make providing medical care difficult at the best of times. At the same time, you've had these well documented cuts to to public health aid, which America was always in the leader of amongst Western countries. So as it happens, I was at uh NGO-led clinic in Goma where there's just been a case announced of Ebola. And I was there to see how they were dealing with a measles outbreak. And similar factors were at play there.
vaccines weren't getting to people who needed them. And also the types of community health workers that you would need to actually do the response weren't as numerous as they had been in the past.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:03–1:01
2
What did the WHO declare about the new Ebola outbreak in the DRC?
1:01–3:45
3
Why is the current Ebola strain harder to control than previous ones?
3:45–6:09
4
How have aid cuts and fewer health workers weakened Africa’s Ebola response?
6:09–8:12
5
What funding and logistical challenges are limiting the international response?
8:12–10:30
6
Why is Andy Burnham seen as the Labour Party’s favorite to become Prime Minister?
10:30–13:11
7
How did Andy Burnham rise to prominence as Mayor of Greater Manchester?
13:11–15:20
8
What steps must Burnham take to become a UK Prime Minister?
15:20–21:30