The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a stunning indictment of the state of global health security. The epidemic should have been containable; few threats are as familiar to health officials and institutions as this one. Ebola viruses were first discovered in northern Congo (then Zaire) in 1976; since then, they have caused 16 outbreaks in that country and dozens more in the region. Ebola remains highly lethal, but over the past five decades, medical professionals and governments have learned how to diagnose the disease, detect its spread, and, when caught early, stop it. Yet the outbreak that has killed over 3,500 people across Congo since early this year is already the deadliest the country has experienced and the fastest spreading in history. Despite recent signs of progress, it is nowhere near being contained.

The difficulty containing this year’s Ebola outbreak does not bode well for the world’s ability to respond effectively to future biological threats. Naturally occurring viruses are emerging more frequently. There were 12 recorded outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg, another deadly disease from the same viral family, during the four years of the Biden administration, compared with five during the previous four years; the current Trump administration could well face even more, having already contended with five outbreaks in less than two years. And the risk of an accidental or deliberate release of a deadly virus is growing. A rising number of labs are handling high-risk pathogens, in part because of a research boom following the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is becoming easier and easier to engineer new viruses using artificial intelligence. Earlier this month, the American AI company Anthropic disclosed five cases in which scientists used its AI software Claude for research that could support biological weapons development, including on variants of bird flu that could evade human immunity. The report confirmed fears that AI models could help bad actors access biological weapons.

The global health system, meanwhile, has been weakened by the Trump administration’s cuts to disease surveillance and outbreak preparedness programs, both within the United States and abroad. But the system was shaky long before U.S. President Donald Trump arrived on the scene. Global threat monitoring processes have significant gaps, inconsistent funding models delay vaccine development, and most countries underinvest in regular, comprehensive health services. Washington and other donors often step up when a crisis emerges, but scrambling to put together an emergency response is far from the best way to handle a biological threat. That approach is struggling to contain Ebola today. When a new, lesser-known pathogen begins to spread, the world needs to be much better prepared.

The current outbreak in Congo likely began at least eight months ago. Residents of Mongbwalu, a small town in the northeastern part of the country, described entire families dying from a mysterious illness as early as January. The virus spread for months before the Congolese government, with help from the World Health Organization (WHO), was able to confirm the source of the outbreak in mid-May. By then, hundreds of cases had already been detected across multiple communities in Congo, and two cases had been confirmed in Uganda. Some delay in detection is to be expected, given the remote location of the earliest deaths, ongoing conflict in the area, and the rarity of this outbreak’s driver, the Bundibugyo virus. But the fact that no previous Ebola outbreak had spread as far before being detected suggests that the global health system is becoming less, not more, prepared to manage biological threats.

Four months after the outbreak was confirmed, responders from the Congolese government, the WHO, and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) are still struggling to contain it. The death rate sits at around 50 percent, much higher than in past Bundibugyo outbreaks, and 60 percent of deaths between mid-July and late August happened outside health facilities. These two patterns suggest that the true numbers of illnesses and deaths are higher than the official figures and that the disease continues to spread beyond the reach of health officials. Although there have been some signs of progress........

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