Ebola outbreak: Let sobriety and human rights prevail
The last six years have seen the world coming to terms with news of numerous infections said to have the potential to wipe out millions of people – Covid-19, MPox, bird flu, Marburg, Hantavirus and Ebola. Yet however threatening a situation may appear to be, we need to remain sober in order to deal with it effectively and efficiently.
The recent news of the hantavirus infections on the MV Hondius Cruise Ship graphically illustrates the importance of sobriety in the face of real or perceived threats to public health. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), by May 27, 2026, almost four weeks after the initial reports, the total infections were only 13, and three had lost their lives. By June 14, 2026, WHO had not reported any further deaths among the passengers of the MV Hondius.
While some got the impression that the hantavirus is new, it is actually routinely found in several regions of the globe. For example, according to KOAT, Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began monitoring the hantavirus disease in 1993, a total of 857 cases have been recorded in the United States alone. Furthermore, Canada reports about three to five cases a year, while WHO notes between 10,000 and 100,000 cases globally each year.
The current messaging around the Ebola outbreak in the DRC is also threatening sobriety. On May 17, 2026, WHO declared Ebola a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Nevertheless, as David Bell, former WHO medical officer and scientist observed in an X post on June 5, 2026, “CDC now reports just 33 confirmed deaths, and less than 400 confirmed cases, well over a month into the outbreak. It will of course increase, but this looks increasingly like a normal Ebola outbreak (with relatively low mortality for Ebola), with the only difference being greater international hysteria and funding to Pharma…. After similar hysteria and massive funding diversion over MPox, avian flu, MPox again, Marburg, Hantavirus and now this, it may be time we re-thought public health leadership at an international level.”
Meanwhile malaria, TB, cholera, among others kill thousands in Africa and elsewhere daily, but the hantavirus among wealthy tourists on a cruise ship and fear of Ebola crossing over to the “Global North” predictably dominate print and electronic media. Indeed, as Prof. Ramesh Thakur and I recently pointed out, many infectious but preventable diseases, along with non-communicable ones, result in many more deaths than pandemics. We also noted that some of the events that WHO has declared “public health emergencies” with the potential to result in thousands or millions of deaths have actually resulted in far fewer fatalities, calling into serious question the draconian measures put in place to contain them. For example, deaths from MPox were only 410 from January 2022 to September 2025, and yet millions of dollars have been spent on MPox mitigation in the Congo, diverting scarce resources from malaria which kills about 70,000 people per year in that country.
In the mid 1940’s, WHO stated in its Constitution: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” WHO had formulated this holistic definition soon after the atrocities of the 1939-1945 war in which doctors and nurses facilitated the killing of Germans with mental and physical disabilities, and conducted numerous inhuman experiments on prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps. As a result, the Nuremberg Code was written, emphasising the right of people to freely accept or reject requests to participate in medical research projects.
Furthermore, the 1978 WHO-UNICEF International Conference on Primary Health Care in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, declared: “The people have the right and duty to participate individually and collectively in the planning and implementation of their health care.”
In the early decades of its existence, WHO was largely funded by its members through assessed contributions. However, the proportion of voluntary contributions from state and non-state actors has been growing, and with it donor conditionalities that have moved the organisation from primary health care in line with the Alma-Ata Declaration. As a result, WHO has now adopted a centralised approach which often imposes one-size-fits-all interventions that disregard local contexts and violate individual and state sovereignty.
The International Health Reform Panel has recently published two reports calling for a return to a human rights-centred approach to public health. The reports hold that such an approach must be grounded in the four cardinal principles of medical ethics, namely, commitment to doing only good for the patient (beneficence), the imperative to refrain from causing harm to the patient (non-maleficence), the injunction to refrain from sharing the patient’s personal information with third parties (patient confidentiality), and the obligation to furnish the patient with adequate information about the benefits and risks of a course of treatment, and thereafter to respect his/her right to accept or decline it (voluntary informed consent).
As we witnessed at the height of Covid-19, preoccupation with conquering viruses, bacteria and other disease-causing organisms often leads to measures that violate people’s civil rights (such as freedom of movement, association and expression) and restrain the poor and vulnerable from earning a living, while the middle-class comfortably “works from home”. All this negatively affects people’s mental and social well-being. As Dr Clare Craig recently observed on X, “The Most important public health advice of all time: Do Not Be Afraid.
