I'm Dr. Sonya Stokes, an emergency physician based in California. Since 2017, I've had the privilege of working alongside Rebuild Hope for Africa (RHA) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Together with Dr. Andi Tenner and a network of physicians, nurses, and public health colleagues across the United States and abroad, we are raising funds to support RHA's frontline response to the Ebola epidemic now spreading through Eastern Congo.

The situation is urgent. In May 2026, the DRC declared its 17th Ebola outbreak, and the World Health Organization designated it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, its highest level of alert. There is no vaccine and no treatment. Early supportive care is often the only thing standing between a patient and death.

As of July 2026, more than 3,000 cases and more than 1,300 deaths have been confirmed, and those numbers continue to climb. The epicenter sits in a region already devastated by armed conflict and mass displacement with hundreds of thousands of people being forced from their homes.

During this outbreak, the world is failing to show up for those in need. The international aid systems that underpinned every major Ebola response of the past decade have been dismantled. In 2025, the United States—historically the largest single donor to global health and the backbone of past outbreak responses—shut down USAID, withdrew from the World Health Organization, and cut the foreign assistance that had funded disease surveillance, frontline health workers, and outbreak coordination across the DRC for years. Other major donors, including the UK, Germany, France, and Canada, reduced their aid in the same year.

The result is a devastating funding gap leading to the destruction: the WHO's emergency response fund is nearly exhausted, no donor has stepped in to fill it, and frontline responders are stretched so thin that some are covering the cost of fuel, transport, and phone credit out of their own pockets just to keep going caring for their patients and communities.

This is where Rebuild Hope for Africa (RHA) comes in. RHA is a Congolese-led humanitarian organization, rooted for nearly two decades in the very provinces at the heart of this outbreak. Unlike responders who arrive and leave, RHA's teams live in these communities; they know the terrain and how to work with local leaders and governments because Eastern Congo is their home. They deliver emergency relief, clean water and sanitation, community health education, and protection for displaced families as well as health workers on the front line. In an outbreak with no vaccine, where the disease spreads fastest through fear, mistrust, and broken health systems, locally trusted organizations like RHA are not just helpful, they are essential.

RHA has the right expertise and dedication to protect the people in Eastern Congo. What they need now is funding so they can keep doing their essential work.

Every dollar raised will go directly to RHA's Ebola response, helping to fund:

The systems that once protected all of us have stepped back. We don't have to. Please give what you can, and please share this campaign as widely as you're able. Every contribution and every share helps RHA reach one more family, one more village, one more life that the world might otherwise overlook.

Thank you for standing with the people of Eastern Congo, and with the responders who refuse to leave them behind.