The current Ebola outbreak reported in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is the 17th since the disease was first identified 50 years ago. More than half of those outbreaks have been reported in the past five years alone, as extractive industries concentrate large mobile populations in biodiversity hotspots where diseases easily spill from animals to people. Recent aid cuts weakened disease surveillance that might have detected the outbreak earlier.
But the earlier aid-driven responses also created distortions that left many affected communities sceptical of epidemic responders who seemed to profit from the “Ebola business”. Increasingly successful containment efforts have made outbreaks less deadly and transmission chains shorter. Ironically, in some cases this means scientists can’t collect meaningful data in clinical trials for vaccines.
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