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EU increases support to contain Ebola outbreak

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Crisis Management Commissioner Hadja Lahbib has announced €16.5 million in additional EU support to stop the Ebola outbreak, after visiting frontline responders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and engaging with the African Union and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Ethiopia.

This includes €6.5m to strengthen the Africa Pathogen Genomics Initiative, to help equip frontline teams train healthcare workers and improve surveillance through diagnostics; €5m to the World Health Organization to strengthen surveillance and access to supplies (e.g. PPE); and in kind contribution of €5 million worth of testing equipment, including rapid diagnostic devices and lab test kits, to be deployed quickly where they are most needed. This additional support is subject to the approval of the budgetary authority.

In Bunia, DRC, Commissioner Lahbib met frontline health workers and humanitarian partners working on Ebola treatment, infection prevention and control, community engagement, and logistics. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, she held meetings with the African Union and Africa CDC to strengthen coordination and accelerate action across borders.

Commissioner Hadja Lahbib said: “Health security is a shared responsibility: viruses do not stop at borders; they do not care about politics.  Europe will continue to stand with Africa CDC, with WHO, and with the communities on the front line of this outbreak. This is about more than containing a virus.  It is about proving that when lives are at stake, the world can still come together and act.”

In May, the European Commission had already allocated €15m in emergency humanitarian assistance for the Ebola response in the DRC and Uganda. In 2026, over €115m in total has been allocated for emergency humanitarian support in the Great Lakes Region and Uganda. An EU Humanitarian Air Bridge, together with UNICEF, has delivered nearly 100 tonnes of supplies to eastern DRC — including medicines, protective equipment, infection-control materials and tents — and the EU is organising five more flights to the DRC.  

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