Every delay in funding an Ebola response gives the virus another opportunity to spread, claim more lives and overwhelm already fragile health systems.
Development Diaries reports that UNICEF has warned that nearly three million children and adolescents are now at risk as confirmed Ebola cases in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) surpassed 1,000 in June.
The United Nations agency also revealed that at least 130 children in Ituri province have already lost one or both parents to the outbreak, raising fresh concerns about a response that is struggling to keep pace with the virus.
One of those children is a nine-year-old girl who arrived alone at an Ebola treatment centre after her mother died 11 days earlier. It is understood that she had spent those days bringing her mother water, cleaning her, and staying by her side throughout the illness.
She later tested positive for Ebola herself. And in communities where caring for sick relatives is simply a way of life, this is how the virus quietly moves from one household to another.
It is tempting to blame Ebola alone for this tragedy, but viruses only exploit the weaknesses societies leave behind. The current outbreak is spreading because conflict limits access to communities, health systems remain fragile and funding continues to arrive more slowly than the disease itself.
Ebola may be the immediate cause of death, but governance failures and delayed international action are helping it find its next victims.
The outbreak has already spread beyond Ituri into North Kivu and South Kivu, while Uganda has confirmed cases in Kampala and France recently recorded an imported case.
Ebola does not spread through the air like Covid-19, but it does not need to, because once infected people begin moving through densely populated cities connected by international travel, every delayed response becomes another opportunity for the virus to cross borders.
Children are carrying a disproportionate share of the burden. Although they account for about 15 percent of confirmed Ebola cases, they represent more than a quarter of all recorded deaths. That should concern anyone familiar with eastern DRC, where many children were already battling chronic malnutrition, poor healthcare and low immunisation coverage long before Ebola arrived.
Asking children with weakened immune systems to survive Ebola is rather like expecting someone to win a boxing match after entering the ring already injured.
Public health experts have known for decades how to contain Ebola. Every infected person must be identified, everyone they have been in contact with must be traced and monitored, and anyone who develops symptoms must be isolated quickly. But the challenge is putting enough people, equipment, and money behind it.
Health experts estimate that at least 90 percent of identified contacts must be consistently followed before an Ebola outbreak can be brought under control, with the current response reaching only about 58 percent.
That gap represents thousands of opportunities for the virus to move quietly into another family, another village or another city before health authorities even realise it has happened.
Conflict explains part of the problem, as armed groups continue to make many communities inaccessible to health workers. The other challenge is funding, with contact tracing requiring trained personnel, vehicles, laboratories, protective equipment, communication systems, and sustained community engagement.
Yet the continental Ebola response launched by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organisation (WHO) remains underfunded, while UNICEF is still seeking millions of dollars to sustain its response for children.
The funding challenge has become even more complicated following the dismantling of USAID, which for years served as one of the world’s principal emergency funding mechanisms during major disease outbreaks. Governments may disagree over foreign aid priorities, but viruses have never shown much interest in political debates.
This is why the current outbreak should concern every African government, regardless of whether it has recorded a single Ebola case. Infectious diseases do not recognise national borders, and delayed action in one country often becomes an emergency in another. Supporting outbreak control in eastern DRC is therefore an investment in regional health security.
There is also a human rights dimension that deserves far greater attention. Every child has the right to the highest attainable standard of health. The children orphaned by Ebola are losing far more than parents. Many also lose access to healthcare, education, nutrition and protection because the systems meant to support them collapse under the pressure of the outbreak.
African governments should therefore move beyond statements of solidarity and make concrete financial commitments to the continental Ebola response. International partners should urgently close the funding gap before another preventable outbreak becomes another global emergency.
Citizens, too, have a role to play by asking their governments what financial contributions they have made and when those commitments will be fulfilled.
The nine-year-old girl in Ituri did exactly what millions of children would have done anywhere in the world, as she cared for her sick mother because she believed someone had to. The least the world can do is show the same commitment to caring for her.
Photo source: Africa CDC
