How Congo Beat Ebola, Until War Brought it Back

Anthony Banbury, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), visits a Ebola treatment centre in Maghuraka, Sierra Leone, which is run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Photo from Flicker, courtesy of UNMEER/Martine Perret

On May 8, the Democratic Republic of Congo made an announcement, one they had made six times prior since 1976. Ebola, the rare but deadly hemorrhagic fever virus, had returned. Alarm bells rang and local practitioners quickly rallied together to alert international health organizations. Just two years earlier Congo was at the center of the world’s deadliest Ebola epidemic on record, one responsible for the…