Catholic social teaching vital against Ebola

On May 21, Ontario health officials announced they were testing a traveler recently returned from East Africa for Ebola virus. 

The case remains unconfirmed. But the headline itself is a reminder that cannot be ignored: infectious disease does not respect borders. In a world connected by flights, trade and shared vulnerability, a missed case in a Ugandan village can become a public health alert in Canada within 24 hours. 

Global health security does not begin at Pearson Airport. It begins in the villages, labs and clinics of East Africa. Uganda knows this reality intimately. Since the devastating Gulu outbreak of 2000, through the Bundibugyo outbreak of 2012, to the Mubende and Kasanda outbreak of 2022, Ugandan health workers, scientists and communities have stood on the frontlines, often with limited resources and against immense fear. Each time, they have stopped Ebola from becoming a regional catastrophe. 

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This is not by accident. Uganda has built, often with international partners, a system of surveillance, laboratory capacity and community engagement that works. Uganda is often the “firebreak” for East Africa. When Uganda holds, the region holds.

From a Catholic perspective, this is not merely a technical or budgetary question. It is a moral one. Catholic Social Teaching offers three principles that speak directly to this moment.

Yet the systems that make this possible are fragile and under threat. For over 20 years, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, has done far more than fight HIV/AIDS in Uganda. It built the backbone of the health system Uganda relies on for all disease threats. PEPFAR funded laboratory networks that can test for Ebola. It trained and paid community health workers who know their villages and can spot the first signs of illness. It strengthened supply chains for personal protective equipment, diagnostics and medicines. It supported data systems that allow rapid reporting and response.

This was never PEPFAR’s primary mandate. But it is one of its most important legacies. During the 2022 Ebola outbreak, districts with strong PEPFAR-supported health systems responded faster, contained cases more effectively and experienced fewer deaths. The same people who tracked HIV patients in their homes tracked Ebola contacts in their communities. The same labs that processed viral load tests processed Ebola PCR tests. The infrastructure was already there. 

When PEPFAR programs are scaled back or defunded, the effects are not abstract. Contact tracing stops because there is no money for transport or airtime. Lab testing slows because reagents are not procured. Community health workers, often women serving their own villages for modest stipends, are laid off. Supply chains fray and clinics run out of basic protective equipment. These are not just HIV program losses. They are holes in the national defense against the next outbreak.

In human terms, a fever in a rural parish might go unreported for three extra days. A suspected case might wait 48 hours for a lab result instead of six. A burial might happen without safe practices because the trained team cannot reach the village. Each delay increases the chance that a single case becomes a cluster, and a cluster becomes an outbreak. 

What is missed in Uganda does not stay in Uganda. The plane from Entebbe to Toronto does not ask about PEPFAR funding. It simply flies.

In Catholic terms, cutting essential funding for this vital life-saving program undermines three pillars of Church’s social doctrine.

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First, life: The Catholic Church affirms that every human life is sacred, from conception to natural death. Protecting life includes preventing deaths that are preventable. When we cut funding for disease surveillance, we make a choice about whose life we are willing to risk. A child in Mubende who dies of undetected Ebola is no less precious than a child in Ontario. The pro-life ethic cannot stop at national borders.

Second, solidarity: We are one human family. Pope Francis repeatedly reminded us that “no one is saved alone.” The health of Canadians is bound to the health of Ugandans because our fates are intertwined. To speak of solidarity without acting to strengthen the weakest links in the global health chain is to use empty words. Supporting PEPFAR is a concrete expression of solidarity that recognizes our shared vulnerability and responsibility.

Third, subsidiarity: Catholic teaching holds that problems should be solved at the most local level possible. This means supporting Ugandan institutions, Ugandan scientists and Ugandan communities to lead their own response. PEPFAR, at its best, does exactly this. It does not replace local systems. It strengthens them. It pays Ugandan nurses, trains Ugandan lab technicians and funds Ugandan NGOs to reach the last mile. This is aid that respects dignity and builds capacity, not dependency.

Some argue foreign aid is wasteful or that the United States and Canada should focus only on home. We understand that concern. But the Ontario case shows why the argument fails. Protecting Canadians requires protecting Ugandans. Investing in health systems abroad is cheaper, more humane and more effective than responding to outbreaks once they reach our shores. It is also consistent with who we claim to be as societies that value life and human dignity.

Failing in that claim has real, on the ground implications. Catherine Nantongo works directly with communities in eastern Uganda. She has seen mothers who now trust community health workers because those workers saved their children during the last outbreak. She has seen what happens when those workers disappear for lack of pay. 

Samuel Wanendeya coordinates partnerships across Mbale and Bugisu, linking grassroots realities to global networks. He has watched PEPFAR-supported clinics become the first line of defense not just for HIV, but for every health threat that comes through the door. 

Austin Mardon writes from Canada, where the fear of imported disease is real, but where the solution lies in prevention at the source. All three of us are Catholic. All three of us believe that faith without works is dead.

The choice before policymakers in Washington, Ottawa and Rome is clear. Restore and protect PEPFAR funding for Uganda and similar programs worldwide. Not as charity, but as strategy. Not as generosity alone, but as justice. The cost of doing so is a fraction of the cost of an uncontrolled outbreak. The moral cost of not doing so is incalculable.

We ask our fellow Catholics in Canada and the United States to raise their voices: Speak to your Members of Parliament, your Congress people, your bishops. Remind them that defending life means defending health systems that stop outbreaks before they start. Remind them that solidarity is not a slogan. It is a commitment to stand with the community health worker in Mubende who might b3 all that stands between a village outbreak and a global emergency.

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Distance may separate Ontario from Mubende. But disease does not. Neither should our responsibility. Let us not wait for the next confirmed case on Canadian soil to remember that. Let us act now, while there is still time, and while the systems that protect us are still worth saving.

(Dr. Samuel Wanendeya Watulatsu has more than 30 years’ experience working in Eastern Uganda. He founded and leads the Foundation for Development of Needy Communities. Professor Austin Mardon, ia Member of the Order of Canada and Fellow of the World Society of Canada, is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry at the University of Alberta. He was appointed by Pope Francis to the Papal Order of St. Silvester. Dr. Catherine Mardon, a mental health advocate in Edmonton, is an assistant adjunct professor in the John Dossetor Health Ethic Center at the University of Alberta.)