The virus is suspected to have claimed at least 223 lives and has infected hundreds of others since April, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Experts are worried because no vaccines exist for the current strain and the outbreak was detected late.

The deadly virus is also spreading during a humanitarian crisis caused by armed conflict in the DRC, making it much harder for aid responders to contain its spread and displacing millions of people.

The outbreak, declared a public health emergency of international concern by the WHO, comes at a time of major cuts to foreign aid funding. The US dismantled its foreign aid agency USAID in 2025 and formally withdrew from the WHO earlier this year under Trump's administration, causing the DRC to lose over a billion dollars in US aid compared to 2024.

A similar thing is happening in Europe. Countdown Europe 2030, an alliance of NGOs, estimates that the EU and eight European countries together have cut or will cut over €30 billion in Official Development Assistance (ODA) since early 2025. ODA is an important source for funding humanitarian and development programmes in lower-income countries.

Only a handful of European countries, such as Spain, have increased their aid spending. Germany, the WHO's current largest donor, cut back both its general aid budget and its contribution to the organisation, including funding for the DRC.

Humanitarian organisations warn that these cuts can weaken health systems in developing countries, making outbreaks harder to detect and respond to. Oxfam and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) say that without these cuts the current outbreak in the DRC could have been detected earlier.

The IRC, for example, closed three of its five health programmes in Ituri province, where the outbreak began after the 2025 cuts. “Health centres might still be there, but they are not as well serviced with medicines and other equipment,” Heather Kerr, the IRC's country director in the DRC, told us.

“The cuts mean that some people in these centres won't be paid anymore. It definitely has had an impact.” She fears that the real number of deaths and infections is much higher than officially reported and will continue to grow.

According to Daniel Bausch, a visiting professor at the Global Health Centre in Geneva, funding cuts have led to fewer people available to trace contacts of those infected with the virus. This is essential to fighting the outbreak, as people exposed to Ebola need to be tested and isolated.

“You need locals for this, usually these are the people that work for aid organisations such as USAID or UNICEF. But their number has been cut back significantly, which is concerning,” he told us.

The Ebola outbreak may be only the tip of the iceberg. The European decline in foreign aid could cost millions of lives in the coming years, according to a recent study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).

ODA cuts by the three largest European donor countries – France, Germany and the UK – alone could contribute to more than 11.5 million preventable deaths by 2030, the study estimates.

In response to the outbreak, the EU and individual European countries have pledged emergency funding and sent supplies. However, aid organisations say this does little to make up for the broader decline in long-term funding.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated last week that the organisation has received only about a third of the funding it needs for the health emergency.

On 5 June, the EU health ministers will meet to discuss the outbreak, including possible measures. One of the discussion points is to implement travel restrictions, despite WHO warnings that such measures can make the response to the outbreak even harder.