Hello Reader
Missiles over the Gulf... Drones over St. Petersburg...
The world is loud this week!
But, we are looking at something quieter which is perhaps more dangerous and with the potential to dwarf everything else on your newsfeed.
An Ebola outbreak is spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo and almost no one is paying attention.
The first case of Ebola emerged on 24 April and has now killed 250 people and infected around 1,000 in DR Congo, while also reaching the borders of Kampala.
The species attacking this time is Bundibugyo, named after a district in Uganda where it was first detected in 2007, and there is no specific vaccine available yet to treat this strain.
Unlike COVID-19, Ebola is not the first of its kind, and it has erupted before, first in the previous century (1976) and later in previous decades (2007 & 2012) as well.
Despite the biologically proven causes of transmission of ebola, mainly through contact with the bodily fluids of infected animals or humans, as well as through bats and bushmeat, there are some underlying geopolitical factors that are worth reading into.
It is significant that we look into the fact that why it emerged now and why in Africa.
The question arises: if a new COVID-19 were to happen, would the world be better equipped to deal with it? Haven't we treated polio, malaria, and diseases of this kind that erupted centuries ago? Then why has Ebola still not been effectively treated, and why do we not even have a vaccine for this Ebola strain that first emerged in 2007 and then again in 2012?
This is not a continent that is simply unlucky with disease. It is a continent whose capacity to contain disease was systematically denied to it, first by colonialism, then by the debt-laden post-independence order, and now by the collapse of international health financing.
USA has left WHO with the idea that health funds would be spent more on Americans as part of the “America First” health strategy, ignoring the fact that multilateralism is necessary to prevent disease from reaching your borders.
Now, talking about what is left in WHO: the Pandemic Agreement—it is still a compromise document because Europeans cannot share their technology to cater to pharmaceutical interests. We are seeing nowhere near the kind of proactive action from the G20 for this recent outbreak as we saw when it became the most relevant political forum in efforts to tackle COVID-19.
Though WHO has flagged Ebola as a public health emergency of international concern, where is that concern?
Now, coming to the elephant in the room; land-use change and habitat fragmentation increase spillover risk by bringing humans, wildlife, and livestock into closer contact. This catastrophe is driven by mining concessions and logging interests. Roads built for extraction have pushed settlements deeper into bat habitats and expanded the bushmeat trade, increasing direct contact with animal reservoirs.
Ebola spreads through contact with the bodily fluids of infected animals or humans. Once that initial spillover occurs, the virus no longer depends on the forest. It moves through a far more efficient network: human-to-human transmission in overcrowded displacement camps, understaffed clinics, and conflict-affected communities unable to isolate the sick.
Coltan is a mineral found in nearly every smartphone and laptop you own. Most of it comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the fight to control it has torn the country apart for decades. These resource wars destroy habitats, displace communities, and push people closer to wildlife, creating the perfect conditions for viruses to jump species.
Measles, monkeypox, and now Ebola, the DR Congo has seen them all. Today, the insurgent group M23 controls Rubaya, a single coltan mine that supplies 15% of the world's tantalum, and is dangling access to it as a strategic trade offer to Washington, while an Ebola outbreak burns in the same region.
What does all of it entail? Extraction has driven previous as well as current epidemics in Africa; be it resources, its institutional capacity, or its right to build resilient health systems on its own terms.
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