Deaths, Burned Clinics - What’s Different About Ebola’s 2026 Return?

InnovationHealthcareDeaths, Burned Clinics - What’s Different About Ebola’s 2026 Return?BySteve Brozak,Contributor.Follow AuthorMay 25, 2026, 10:43am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.FC/M23 soldiers provide security for the movement's authorities at the Rodolphe Mérieux Laboratory, National Biomedical Research Institute (INRB) in Goma, on May 19, 2026 during their guided visit to the laboratory responsible for analyzing and handling suspected Ebola cases. The World Health Organization on Tuesday voiced concern about the "scale and speed" of an Ebola outbreak that has killed an estimated 131 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and warned it could be lengthy.The UN health agency has declared the surge of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever an international health emergency and called an urgent meeting on the crisis.No vaccine or therapeutic treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola responsible for the outbreak, which has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa in the past half-century. (Photo by Jospin Mwisha / AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty ImagesIn August of 2014, as the West African Ebola outbreak accelerated and infected Americans were transported back to the United States, I wrote a Forbes piece titled “Ebola Has Landed.” The concern of 12-years ago was not simply about one virus crossing borders. It was about what Ebola represented: a warning that globalization, fragile healthcare infrastructure, delayed political responses, and inadequate bio-defense planning had combined to create a world increasingly vulnerable to biological crises.Two weeks later, I made an argument in a Bloomberg-Businessweek Opinion Ebola piece that seemed controversial at the time as my conclusion was blunt: the Ebola crisis would not end without military intervention. That argument challenged policymakers in infectious disease response. Ebola was no longer s...