Ebola and the growing reality of polycrises

By Eva Schaessens

As the current Ebola outbreak unfolds, it is exposing a familiar but pressing reality: health emergencies rarely occur in isolation.

Experts increasingly describe these overlapping and interconnected crises as a “polycrisis”, a situation where conflict, political instability, displacement and fragile health systems interact in ways that compound risk and make emergencies harder to manage.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, efforts to control Ebola are taking place amid armed conflict, displacement and weakened public systems. In May 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), underscoring the severity of the crisis and the challenges of constraining it. WHO has described this as a “collision of disease and conflict,” where outbreaks are shaped as much by politics, infrastructure and trust as by pathogens.

At the Institute of Health Emergencies & Pandemics (IHEP), housed at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, researchers draw on interdisciplinary expertise to address complex polycrises that shape public health emergencies.

Layered crises, compounded risks

For Joy Fitzgibbon, a political scientist at Trinity College who studies global health governance, the Ebola response reflects multiple crises unfolding at once.

“You have a weak governance structure, the breakdown of civil order, and a fragmented healthcare system that lacks the capacity to provide strong primary health care to at-risk populations,” she says.

When a disease like Ebola strikes, Fitzgibbon says it requires “an acute and specialized response against the backdrop of these dire conditions.” In regions affected by violence, even basic response measures can become difficult. Transporting supplies or patients may be dangerous or impossible, and health facilities themselves can be damaged or targeted.

Fitzgibbon notes that inadequate infrastructure, shortages of medical supplies and a lack of trained medical teams can make it harder to detect cases and provide supportive care, including isolation and aggressive rehydration, leading to what she describes as preventable suffering and death.

Conflict does more than complicate response efforts. It can also shape how outbreaks spread. Displacement and population movement increase transmission risk, while insecurity disrupts already strained systems and erodes trust, an essential component of effective public health measures.

“Conflict doesn’t just complicate an outbreak response, it can produce the conditions that allow disease to spread in the first place,” says Dani Nedal, an assistant professor of political science at the Munk School of Global Affairs. “Displacement, resource depletion and insecurity all reshape how outbreaks emerge and unfold.”

Trust and the limits of response

Even when clinical tools to manage Ebola are well established, implementing them depends on functioning systems and public cooperation. Contact tracing, for example, requires the ability to identify and monitor cases, a challenge in settings marked by weak governance and constant movement.

Distrust can further undermine response efforts. In communities shaped by conflict and external intervention, public health messaging may be met with skepticism.

“In these environments, distrust becomes a central barrier,” Nedal says. “People may question whether responders are there to help or harm, which makes even basic measures much harder to carry out.”

Fitzgibbon notes that effective response efforts also depend on strong relationships between health workers and local communities. Dr. Nelson Lee, director of IHEP and an infectious disease expert, says while “outbreak responses must remain grounded in scientific public health guidance, its implementation requires a culturally sensitive approach”. He adds that responses must also consider local contexts, traditions and community practices. In Ebola outbreaks, for example, traditional burial practices have been linked to transmissions, highlighting the importance for community engagement to establish safe and dignified burial practices to stop disease spread.

A changing global response

The outbreak is also unfolding a shifting global context. Fitzgibbon points to declining international support and reduced capacity in key institutions as a growing challenge. “Who is able to coordinate on the ground there in the middle of conflict?” she asks.

Nedal notes that this challenge is compounded by changes in global governance. Recently, the United States, long central to global health funding and coordination, has reduced its role across key systems and agencies. As a result, the aid networks and infrastructure that once supported outbreak response have weakened, making coordination more difficult and reducing readiness to respond to complex crises.

This raises questions about how future responses will be organized and how they will be sustained. Nedal also points to the long-term implications of these shifts. When outbreaks occur in already fragile settings, delayed or under-resourced responses can allow crises to escalate. Limited public health resources can also weaken disease surveillance systems, delaying detection and reporting. “By the time the outbreak was recognized and reported, it may already be well under way, and there were also difficulties even in confirming the diagnosis,” says Dr. Lee.

Nedal adds that strengthening prevention through sustained investment in public health systems and early detection is often far more effective, and less costly, than responding after an outbreak has taken hold.

Beyond emergency response

For researchers at IHEP, the lesson is clear, managing health emergencies requires more than medical interventions. It demands attention to governance, health security measures, and the social foundations of health, from housing and nutrition to income and equity.

Fitzgibbon argues that outbreaks must be understood as part of broader structural challenges. “We don’t live in a resource-scarce world,” she says. “We live in a world that has a resource distribution problem.”

The Ebola outbreak is a reminder that global health threats are not simply technical problems. They are systems challenges, shaped by conflict, governance and inequality as much as by disease itself.

At IHEP, that interdisciplinary perspective is central, not only to solve a single outbreak, but to help reframe how we understand and prepare for what comes next. In a context where crises no longer occur in isolation, the question becomes not only how we respond, but whether we are prepared to anticipate what lies ahead.