The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the most volatile the world has ever seen. And it is testing the revamped World Health Organization, which transformed itself after criticism following its botched handling of the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic. Amy traveled to the DRC with the WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as he visited his team on the ground a year into the outbreak. Some of his first responders had been killed, and the WHO was lacking funds to continue the response. Once in DRC, Amy found that the Ebola response looked different than it had in West Africa, where she had reported from Sierra Leone at the peak of the crisis.
Big, international agencies were mainly operating out of Goma, a more comfortable city that is a two-days drive away from the areas struck by Ebola, because that region of North Kivu is a hotbed for violence perpetuated by dozens of armed groups. Tedros and his team were filling in the gaps, but at great personal cost. Almost all of them had been assaulted verbally, and some physically.
Still, the Ebola responders interviewed for her story are dedicated and compassionate. They understood that the people they were trying to help had reasons to mistrust authorities and outsiders.
Amy takes a long-view of the news, in “Ebola Wars.” Tedros admitted that even if his team manages to curb this Ebola crisis, fragile regions of the world remain at high risk. “As long as places are this vulnerable, this will keep happening,” he says.