The case of US missionary doctor Peter Stafford, who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and received experimental treatment in Germany, highlights stark disparities in global healthcare. Stafford was helping Ebola patients in the DRC when he fell ill with the highly contagious and often fatal disease. The Trump administration allegedly refused to let him enter the US, citing Germany's proximity, though Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to keep Ebola out of the country.
At Berlin's Charité hospital, Stafford was treated with MBP-134, an experimental drug still in clinical trials and not approved for human use. However, the World Health Organization and Africa CDC had already prioritized MBP-134 and Remdesivir for experimental use in the DRC outbreak on May 15, 2026, before Stafford's evacuation. Thus, the treatment could have been administered in Africa, but access to monoclonal antibodies there is severely limited.
Dr. Thomas Cronen, a senior physician at Charité, and his colleague Maximilian Gertler, who were in Nairobi exchanging knowledge with doctors from the East African Community, openly acknowledged the injustice. "It was heartbreaking to see what was going on in the DRC and, at the same time, to see how many resources can be mobilized to get this one patient from the DRC to Germany," Cronen said.
Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have been around since the 1980s, with about 144 approved by 2025. MBP-134 has shown promise in lab studies on ferrets and monkeys. But as Gertler noted, "These medications require a certain level of clinical care, a setting where you can store them, where you can properly provide it to the patients, where you can monitor the medication." Such infrastructure is lacking in many African hospitals.
The US regime's cuts to USAID programs by 83% and withdrawal from the WHO have worsened the situation. "This epidemic evolved on a fertile ground of instability, insufficient healthcare. Healthcare centers have closed; many staff contracts were not extended," Gertler said. He warned that local outbreaks can become global pandemics, asking, "Why do we stand by so blankly?"
Source: www.dw.com