The return of Ebola
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A new Ebola outbreak, driven by a rare strain of the virus, has struck the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The rapid rise in cases and deaths suggests that the virus had been circulating for some time before the alarm was raised. So why wasn’t it detected sooner? And have recent international aid cuts made us more vulnerable to outbreaks of infectious diseases?
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Guest: Paul Hunter, professor in medicine, University of East Anglia.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producers: Micaela Arneson, Julia Webster.
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Read more: ‘There are bodies everywhere’: ghost of ebola returns to haunt Congo
Further listening: How the hantavirus cruise ship nightmare unfolded - The Saturday Story
Clips: PBS, AFP.
Photo: Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manvina. |
| 0:09.1 | While the world was grappling with a strange news of an outbreak of Hanta virus aboard a Dutch |
| 0:15.6 | cruise ship. On land, another health crisis was brewing. |
| 0:20.1 | Health officials are racing to contain a rapidly expanding outbreak of a rare strain of Ebola in Central Africa. |
| 0:27.1 | When the news broke over the weekend that almost 90 people had already died of Ebola, |
| 0:33.9 | with around another 300 suspected cases, the World Health Organization led by Dr. Tedros Adonom Gébriasis, |
| 0:42.5 | acted quickly. |
| 0:43.9 | Early on Sunday, I declared a public emergency of international concern |
| 0:49.7 | over an epidemic of Ebola disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. |
| 0:56.8 | By Tuesday afternoon, at the time of recording this episode, |
| 1:01.1 | the death toll has already risen to more than 130, |
| 1:05.3 | with more than 500 suspected cases. |
| 1:08.6 | I'm deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic. |
| 1:14.8 | Health officials are scrambling to respond. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where most of the |
| 1:20.6 | cases have been identified, the health minister has issued a plea for those with symptoms |
| 1:26.0 | to come forward immediately. |
| 1:30.4 | This is not a mystical disease. |
| 1:33.2 | Make yourself known. |
| 1:34.6 | Make yourself known so that you can be taken care of |
| 1:37.2 | and so that we can prevent the disease from spreading. |
| 1:40.3 | But health experts around the world are worried that this is just the beginning. |
| 1:46.0 | What concerns me most is that we learned way too much, way too quickly for this to be anything but really bad. |
... |
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