Healthcare workers in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are battling the world's third-largest Ebola outbreak with no gloves, no protective suits, and unpaid wages — after USAID funding was cut.
Donate Now on GoFundMe 100% goes to healthcare workers on the groundFigures reported August 5, 2026. Case and death data: DRC Ministry of Health via Associated Press (AP). Official outbreak overview: World Health Organization (WHO).
On May 15, 2026, the World Health Organization declared an Ebola outbreak in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo — caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which no approved vaccine or treatment exists. Two days later it was designated a global public health emergency.
As reported on August 5, 2026, the DRC Ministry of Health had recorded 3,874 confirmed Ebola cases and 1,751 deaths. The outbreak has spread across five provinces — Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, and Tshopo — and remains active.
The healthcare workers on the frontlines know this. They show up anyway. But now, they are doing so without the basic tools to keep themselves or their patients alive.
Ebola is a lesser evil. That's how they put it.
— WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, after visiting DRC communities (STAT News, June 13, 2026)
For years, USAID funding sustained critical healthcare infrastructure across eastern DRC — training health workers, stocking clinics with protective equipment, and supporting the local organizations who do the most dangerous work.
In early 2025, that funding was abruptly cut. The ripple effects have been catastrophic. The global networks designed to detect and respond to outbreaks like this one were systematically dismantled. The institutional knowledge built during the 2018–2020 Ebola response — one of the most sustained in history — is gone. The people trained to use it have scattered, fled conflict, or can no longer afford to stay.
There is no surveillance. There is no health system. And people who have been trained some years ago, due to the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in the region, are not even in place anymore.
— WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (STAT News, June 13, 2026)
WHO field staff have faced death threats. Community mistrust of foreign health organizations runs deep, rooted in a painful history of interventions that helped the world but left local people behind. Meanwhile, isolation bed capacity is "far below the anticipated need" — patients who should be separated to stop the spread of infection have nowhere to go.
Every dollar goes directly to healthcare workers with Rebuild Hope for Africa on the ground in DRC. Here is what they urgently need:
Gloves, gowns, N95 masks, face shields, and boot covers — the minimum required to enter an Ebola treatment zone safely.
Thermometers, blood pressure monitors, IV supplies, and diagnostic tools that have run out since aid was cut.
Many healthcare workers have gone unpaid for months. Direct support keeps them able to work — and alive — during the outbreak.
In a region with destroyed roads and active conflict, moving supplies and personnel to where they are needed is itself a life-or-death challenge.
Oral rehydration salts, nutritional supplements, and basic medications that reduce mortality for patients in treatment centers.
Reliable communications equipment to coordinate between health zones — critical for contact tracing and outbreak surveillance.
Rebuild Hope for Africa (RHA) is a DRC-based national non-profit organization working on humanitarian and development issues in one of the world's most fragile regions. Unlike international organizations that parachute in during crises, RHA is rooted in the communities it serves — staffed by Congolese nationals who understand the local context, speak the languages, and have built the trust that outside organizations never could.
RHA's technical advisor, Gang Karume, is a DRC native with over two decades of humanitarian and development experience across Chad, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, the Great Lakes Region, and beyond. He has worked with Columbia University, Tufts University, and international evaluation bodies on research projects spanning human rights, education, and displacement. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the Université Évangélique en Afrique.
In a region where foreign organizations have come and gone for decades — often extracting knowledge and data without leaving anything behind — RHA is the long-term answer. They were there before this outbreak, and they will be there after. Your donation helps them stay.
This is not a repeat of a familiar story. The Bundibugyo strain has no approved vaccine. The region is in active armed conflict, with no single authority to negotiate with. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are living in cramped camps where the virus can spread in days. Neighboring Uganda has confirmed cases too.
The WHO has warned that the scale is "much bigger than what is being detected." Contact tracing — the tool that stopped previous outbreaks — is failing because people are on the move, hiding sick relatives, or simply don't trust the health system enough to come forward.
The global response has been slow and under-resourced. At the same moment that this outbreak exploded, the networks, budgets, and trained personnel built to handle exactly this scenario were being dismantled by foreign aid cuts. The people left to deal with it are the local workers — and they are doing it with almost nothing.
Cases are being identified in new health zones on a near-daily basis. That reflects really the scale of this outbreak: a scale that is much bigger than what is being detected.
— Olivier le Polain, WHO Head of Epidemiology (Al Jazeera, June 12, 2026)
This is the moment when outside support matters most. Not after the outbreak peaks. Not when it reaches the news cycle of wealthier nations. Now.
Healthcare workers in eastern DRC are risking everything — against a deadly disease, in a war zone, without the tools they need. You can change that today.
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