Hard to believe it, but a few years on from the worst global pandemic in more than a century, our world is ignoring an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that is breaking records by the week, claiming thousands of victims, and killing nearly half of them at speed.

The deadly virus first discovered there exactly 50 years ago has killed more than 2,000 people, a death toll reached almost three times faster than the outbreak a decade ago that was the worst in history.

This week, the director general of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was on track to become the deadliest ever outbreak of the disease.

This outbreak started in February but went almost unnoticed until it was declared on 15 May. “What’s terrifying is that the virus is way ahead of us,” an old UN colleague told me. They are now working to co-ordinate UN resources, but admitted: “We are chasing the virus.”

“This time the world is paying little or no attention,” they said. “Instead, at every turn you see how the cuts in international aid are dramatically limiting what we can do.”

The outbreak in Congo is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, for which there is no vaccine or treatment. As always in that country, which I visited twice when advising the then-UN secretary general, the conflict that has engulfed eastern Congo for years means that attempts to help the sick face the kind of violence and bloodshed hard to imagine unless you’ve seen it first-hand.

Dozens of armed groups, working for others in neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda, are in pursuit of the country’s extraordinary mineral deposits: chief among them coltan, a necessity for any mobile phone, with the DRC home to 80 per cent of the world’s reserves.

Many of the latest victims and deaths are reported in areas way beyond the reach of aid workers or doctors. “They are vulnerable to the gunmen of the many militias, now Ebola as well,” said one aid worker from the charity Caritas.

‘Communicable diseases do not stay at home’

I can still recall the numbers quoted when, representing the UN before the White House and Congress, I attempted to persuade American politicians to pay for our continued peacekeeping efforts in the 2000s. Those numbers defied belief. Five million dead in a decade. Seven million displaced. And no one could put a figure on the number of women raped in a war that made rape a weapon.

Dr Denis Mukwege was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his devotion to women survivors. “Congo is in such chaos that it could so easily be an incubator for a pandemic,” he told me when I visited him at his workplace, the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, after the last outbreak. “The world doesn’t see how it’s in its best interest to look after countries such as ours.”

Alan Doss, longtime British head of the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Congo, put the virus into clear context this week. “Communicable diseases do not stay at home,” he told me. “The world seems to have forgotten that the first human infections of HIV/Aids occurred in Congo, but years later it became such a defining issue for Western public health. Just because it’s in Africa, and not next door, you can’t ignore it.”

In the meantime, one WHO source reports that the organisation cannot pay some first responders because of budget cuts, leading to the unthinkable in such a crisis: medical workers on strike.

“This is a nightmare, an epidemic that could have months to run yet, with our global response just short of the resources to confront it,” they told me, adding that a vaccine for this Ebola strain could be a long way off. “From the closure by Trump of the giant USAID, to the reduction in Europe of aid programmes too, you know we are looking at a world shutting its eyes to a catastrophe in the making.”

Britain too shares responsibility. The UK Government is cutting official development assistance to the DRC by 29 per cent from 2024-25 levels.

Last month, the UK medically evacuated a British humanitarian worker to a London hospital after they were exposed to the virus. In June, a case was identified in France in a doctor returning from the Congo. The risk of Ebola spreading in Europe remains very low because it only transmits through direct contact with infected bodily fluids. But the outbreak has raised fears over the serious danger of another pandemic, thanks to factors like climate change, human-animal contact, international travel – and how unprepared the world is.

The Trump administration started this year by officially withdrawing from the WHO, accusing it of mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic. The loss of America’s major financial contribution has triggered huge reductions in staff and resources.

Since Covid, WHO members have worked to create an international pandemic treaty designed to prepare for and prevent future pandemics: for example, through sharing vaccines and drugs. But with such a significant ally missing, my WHO source is rightly concerned: “The absence of the Americans is a dark shadow over all and any plans to face a pandemic tomorrow, let alone Ebola today.”

David Smith was an award-winning correspondent for ITN and Channel 4 News in Africa, the Middle East, Moscow and Washington before becoming an adviser to UN secretary general Kofi Annan, representing the UN at the White House and the US Congress.