UN relief chief warns Ebola is outpacing the response in DRC

Statement on the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher

14 August 2026

Ebola is winning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We cannot let the virus outrun our response.

The outbreak is the fastest growing on record. Dr. Tedros of the World Health Organization has warned that it is set to become the deadliest. The epidemic is killing someone every 30 minutes.

Today, I chaired an emergency meeting of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee. The Heads of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations agreed to turbocharge our collective response.

We have made progress since we activated the collective humanitarian scale-up in early June.

Agency leadership in the region is stronger. Our Senior Ebola Coordinator is deployed to strengthen coordination, and international donors have backed us with nearly US$300 million.

Today, I am allocating an additional $30.5 million from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF). This complements the previous $24 million allocated to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and four neighbouring countries to tackle the outbreak.

I have today deployed 20 additional staff to the frontlines. But this is a wake-up call. We need speed, scale and solidarity before this virus gets even further ahead of us.

Our Ebola scale-up plan is sharply focused on protecting lives. We need to double the number of teams ensuring safe and dignified burials, triple the treatment capacity, improve contact tracing, and deploy more experienced managers. Crucially, we must meet the immense needs for water, hygiene, health care and other basic services in the region.

More than 2,000 people have already died. Many more are at risk. The world needs to wake up, and show up.