“It was heartbreaking to see what was happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, at the same time, to see how many resources could be mustered to bring this one patient from the DRC to Germany,” he said. thomas cronanCharite – a senior physician and infectious disease specialist in intensive care at the Berlin University Hospital.
Cronan and his colleagues Maximilian Gertler We were in Nairobi, Kenya when we spoke. He was there to exchange knowledge about treating Ebola with 50 doctors from eight member states of the East African Community (EAC).
We came to the subject of Peter Stafford, an American-American missionary physician who was evacuated from the DRC in mid-May for treatment at Charite, because, as the US government said at the time, Germany was closer than the US.
Others speculated that the Trump administration refused to allow Stafford into the U.S. after Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised to keep all Ebola cases out of the country.
Stafford was helping people suffering from Ebola in the DRC when he contracted the highly contagious and often fatal disease.
In Berlin, Stafford received an “experimental” treatment – experimental only in the sense that the drug, known as MBP-134, is still in clinical trials and has not been approved for human use. From reports at the time it seemed as if he could only get treatment outside Africa. This was not completely true.
At an emergency meeting on May 15, 2026 – before Stafford’s evacuation – the World Health Organization and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to prioritize two drugs for experimental treatment in the DRC Ebola outbreak, one of which was MBP-134.
What exactly is MBP-134?
MBP-134 is a combination of two antibodies taken from a survivor of the West African Ebola outbreak that began in 2013.
The antibodies in MBP-134 are reproduced in a laboratory and, therefore, they are known as monoclonal antibodies (or mAbs).
Monoclonal antibodies have been around since the 1980s. The first was approved as a drug to prevent kidney transplant rejection. However, only in the last 10 years have we seen their use increase, from 30 approved mAbs in 2014 to approximately 144 approved mAbs by 2025. One of the most talked about uses of monoclonal antibodies is the drug lecanumab for Alzheimer’s, a form of dementia. In this sense, mAbs offer many innovative treatments in medicine. They are still not as widespread as they could be.
In laboratory studies, MBP-134 has been tested on ferrets and cynomolgus monkeys, both of which survived infection with various Ebola-causing viruses, including Bundibugyo, which caused the 2026 DRC outbreak. It has also been tested on humans.
Therefore, MBP-134 was known as a promising drug. But access to monoclonal antibodies is limited in Africa.
“It requires more than a drug,” said Gertler, an epidemiologist and tropical and emergency medicine specialist with years of experience in the field.
“These medications require a certain level of clinical care, a setting where you can store them, where you can provide it to patients appropriately, where you can monitor the medication,” he said.
The second drug deemed suitable for testing in the DRC outbreak was remdesivir.
Remdesivir is an antiviral that was originally developed as a potential treatment for hepatitis C and later tested against COVID-19 during the pandemic.
‘The injustice is clear’
Cronan and Gertler saw a clear case of disparity between conditions in German or European hospitals and those in East Africa.
Even among EAC countries, standards vary. For example, there is a “higher level of care available” in Rwanda than in South Sudan, Cronan said.
“Questions come up and there aren’t always good answers. You might recommend some other diagnostics. For example, if they say, ‘We don’t have a CT scan,’ we teach them that in some situations, you can use an ultrasound machine because ultrasound machines are more readily available than CT scans.”
Cronan agrees that this is an injustice in global public health.
“It’s obvious. But when you look at other diseases [other than Ebola]This is injustice to you also. If you look at what we are investing in oncology, hematology, what we are able to treat for hundreds of thousands of dollars… and here it is simply not possible. “It’s obvious to everybody,” Cronan said.
How does Africa manage despite cuts in foreign aid?
African countries and their physicians have handled Ebola epidemics in the past, despite obvious differences – lack of funding, medical machines and medicine.
“[Past] The Ebola outbreak – whether it was 20 cases or 30,000 cases – was controlled by all non-pharmacological measures, through collaboration between research, public institutions, and the population,” he said. “Cases were isolated, contacts were traced, and health education was implemented,” he said. “We can do a lot about the pandemic if we really want and cooperate.”
But that spirit of cooperation seems to be vanishing. America is again considering cutting foreign financial aid A proposal to fundamentally change how the US Office of Management and Budget awards grants.
In short, and if the new rules go into effect, no money will be allowed to leave the US unless it clearly helps Americans.
This is in addition to the fact that the US has already cut USAID programs by 83% and withdrawn from WHO. And some European countries stepped in to fill this gap.
“This pandemic has developed on the fertile ground of instability, inadequate health care. Health care and surveillance have been weak for years. And these cuts have made them weak again,” Gertler said. “We know from colleagues – and I know this from my stay in the DRC in 2025 – health care centers have closed; contracts of many staff have not been extended; stocks of medicines have been cut. All this is visible in the last year.”
These effects may soon be felt elsewhere. “When it comes to diseases with epidemic potential,” Gertler said, “there is also a public interest far beyond the outbreak area.”
We saw this during Covid, when a local outbreak became a regional pandemic and then a global pandemic.
More recently, we saw people fear in Spain when a Caribbean cruise ship carrying Hantavirus patients arrived in the Canary Islands.
And it appears the Trump administration knows it, too. Perhaps that is why he wanted Stafford to get his treatment somewhere other than America.
“It’s painful to watch,” Gertler said. “Yes, that.” [Ebola] Diseases are rare. But we as doctors and witnesses to this situation must raise the question: Why are we standing so naked?”
Edited by: Richard Connor