If you thought COVID-19 was bad, buckle up. Ebola doesn’t spread like COVID, but makes it look like a mild flu season.

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Ebola’s been around since 1976, but these days it’s moving faster than ever: the 2026 outbreak is the largest ever recorded in its first month, and the head of Africa’s Centres for Disease ​Control and Prevention has warned it could be the worst Ebola outbreak on record.

The first case on European soil was also just confirmed in France.

Global health law tells countries what they should be doing when there’s an outbreak to keep everyone as safe as possible.

There’s some good news about how it’s developed lately, and some bad news.

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Good news:

1. Countries are faster to report outbreaks

States have always had to report disease outbreaks to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The International Health Regulations (IHR), a binding treaty, required them to (Article 6). But report what, exactly, and when?

This wasn’t clear, and resulted in slower reporting until the IHR was recently amended.

Now, the legal trigger for reporting now explicitly covers unexplained clusters of severe respiratory illness, and even a handful of cases can qualify, before any lab has confirmed what’s actually causing them.

The bar for “this counts, tell us now” got lower.

Because of this, WHO got its first alert about this Ebola outbreak on 5 May 2026, based on an unusual cluster of deaths, before lab confirmation even existed. That’s much faster.

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2. The WHO is faster to declare a public health emergency

The WHO has a practice of declaring an outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) when it gets to a critical stage needing serious collaboration between countries.

When Ebola broke out in December 2013, a PHEIC wasn’t declared until August 2014 (roughly 8 months later).

When it broke out again in 2018, a PHEIC wasn’t declared until July 2019 (roughly 11 months later).

This time (2026): the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) officially declared the outbreak (once lab tests came in) on 15 May.

The WHO declared a PHEIC two days later, on 17 May.

That’s a totally different category of speed.

Bad news:

3. No enforcement

Surprise! If a state hides an outbreak, is unresponsive or uncooperative (breaching Article 6), there’s no penalty.

So for instance, contact tracing in this Ebola outbreak has reached ~45% of contacts, against WHO’s own 90% benchmark. But there’s no legal consequence.

The system is designed to be “non-punitive” and “non-adversarial”, by its own legal text (Article 54bis). It’s built to encourage, not enforce.

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4. Equity’s still a problem

Equity means: resources and access to health aren’t split equally, but go where the need is greatest.

It’s become even more important after we witnessed vaccine hoarding by Western countries during COVID-19 (remember that? Good times :D).

The IHR amendments added “equity and solidarity” as a formal principle (Article 3) and a new financing mechanism meant to get vaccines and supplies to poorer countries during emergencies, though it hasn’t been tested yet.

Meanwhile, equity’s still a big problem.

When this Ebola outbreak hit DRC, the US wouldn’t bring its own exposed citizens home. Instead it tried to build a quarantine facility in Kenya… a country with zero Ebola cases.

The message Kenyans heard: ‘too dangerous for us, fine for you.’ That’s the equity gap the new treaty language is supposed to close, playing out in real time. Kenyan courts and ministers blocked this move.

Changing the law was the easy part. Changing how seriously states take equity will be the harder fight.

Conclusion: The law can spot an outbreak fast now. But it’s still not fair: it can’t make anyone pay for it or stop a rich country offloading risk onto a poor one. And until it is, every outbreak will keep exposing the same gap.

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The topic of this post was requested by SAIL subscriber Naa (@naa1720920). If you have a topic making news headlines you’d like covered, drop a comment or contact hello@learnsail.org.

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• Can International Law Stop Hantavirus? (In 3 minutes)

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[The usual caveats apply: this is a simplified explainer, lawyers may disagree on several of these points, and by the time you read this, something may have already changed.]

Hantavirus has been spreading from a cruise ship that left Argentina on April 1st 2026.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says the global risk is low and it’s not another COVID-19.

But there’s no treatment or vaccine, people have died and ~30 passengers who left the ship early are being tracked across the UK, US, Canada, Netherlands, South Africa, and other countries.

So can international law actually stop something like this?

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Right now: The system is working

Hantavirus is a contained outbreak; not a pandemic. The International Health Regulations (IHR) are the rulebook on how countries handle diseases that cross borders.

It was updated and took effect in September 2025 (following COVID-19 failures).

E.g.: When the UK notified WHO on 2 May about the cruise ship, it was directly following the IHR.

• One big COVID lesson: fewer people fumbling around

Under the updated IHR, countries must now create one National IHR Authority: a government office in charge of coordinating responses to cross-border health threats.

Before, during COVID-19, you had lots of departments doing their own thing and fumbling to figure out who’s in charge.

This has possibly improved coordination for hantavirus. The WHO says countries are coordinating well. Good sign.

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• Vaccine hoarding is supposed to be harder now

Under the updated IHR, WHO must help countries get fair access to vaccines and actively remove obstacles preventing this.

This fixes one of COVID’s biggest failures: rich countries bought up vaccines while others waited months or years.

If a hantavirus vaccine were developed, WHO would be legally required to ensure Cape Verde or South Africa (where the cruise ship stopped) get access at the same time as the UK or Switzerland.

(Of course, countries must be willing to make this happen too.)

The problem is 11 countries (including Germany, Israel, Brazil, Canada) rejected these IHR updates. So they’re not bound by the equity provisions. E.g.: If Israel develops a vaccine, it could keep it. Still, for a small outbreak like this, the system is functioning for now.

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If it became a pandemic: Different story

If hantavirus escalates to a true pandemic, different rules also kick in: the Pandemic Agreement.

The problem is that agreement can’t work yet. Countries are still negotiating the crucial part (how to share virus samples and vaccines) through 2027. Until then, it’s just paper and countries would share vaccines out of goodwill, not legal obligation.

And WHO has less power to push them because:

• The US exited WHO taking ~$1 billion in funding

This forced WHO to cut 1,200 jobs (22% of staff) by June 2026.

Countries have pledged more funding to compensate, and would need to hurry if a pandemic broke out.

• Argentina (where the cruise ship came from) left too

It left on 17 March 2026, just weeks before this outbreak! So it has no legal obligation to share findings or participate in the global response.

But it will keep cooperating with PAHO (WHO’s regional office for the Americas), so neighbouring countries can still share its hantavirus data with the global WHO system.

One silver lining:

The updated IHR created a new ‘pandemic emergency’ alert level that triggers stronger coordination. So at least the alarm bells would be louder.

In brief:

For this outbreak, international law is mostly doing its job. But for the next pandemic? Only if countries actually fund and use the tools they’ve built.

If you found this useful, share it with someone who might find it useful too!

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If you enjoyed this SAIL post, you might also enjoy:

• The U.S. and Argentina Quit the World Health Organization: What Happens Next? (In 2 minutes)

• How to Explain the International Law Behind Ebola To Your Friends in 3 Minutes

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As soon as Trump began his second presidential term in 2025, he announced that the U.S. would pull out of the World Health Organization (WHO). The withdrawal took a year to take effect and became official on 22 January 2026.

Argentina followed suit, announcing its exit on 25 February 2025, which will take effect a year later on 17 March 2026.

Once both withdrawals are complete, the U.S. and Argentina will be the only countries in the world outside the WHO (!).

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1. What’s the WHO?

WHO is an international organisation with the mission to help countries keep people healthy.

It tracks diseases (e.g., polio, HIV), gives health advice, responds to outbreaks (e.g., Ebola, COVID-19), sets health guidelines and helps countries coordinate to work together instead of everyone guessing and scrambling on their own.

2. Are the U.S. and Argentina allowed to leave?

The U.S. (kind of) is, but Argentina isn’t.

The WHO was created by a treaty called the WHO Constitution: basically, countries got together and said, “Let’s make a club to tackle global health.”

Most treaties spell out how members can leave, but the WHO’s Constitution… doesn’t. (Deliberately!) Awkward, right?

That’s because leaving isn’t really supposed to be an option. Over the years, countries like China, Russia, Ukraine, and others have tried, and failed, to walk away.

So yeah, Argentina? Not allowed to leave.

The U.S. is a special case. When it joined the WHO, it passed a U.S. law saying it could leave with one year’s notice, as long as it paid all the money it owed. The WHO agreed.

But here’s the catch: according to the WHO, the U.S. still hasn’t paid for 2024, 2025, or 2026!

So technically, it shouldn’t have been allowed to leave without paying up first… but it did anyway.

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3. What does their departure mean?

The U.S. leaving is a big deal as it’s been the WHO’s top donor, only trumped (get it? 😄) by the Gates Foundation and GAVI Alliance.

Argentina isn’t a major donor, but the worry is that its exit could inspire other countries to follow.

Less money means the WHO can do less to fight disease and respond to emergencies.

It also makes the U.S. and Argentina more vulnerable if another major outbreak hits, because their governments won’t be fully cooperating or sharing information through the WHO.

One small silver lining: California has joined GOARN, a WHO-coordinated network of experts and resources that helps countries respond to outbreaks. So there’s still a foot in the door.

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4. What’s next for the WHO?

The WHO wasn’t thrilled about this.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Over the past year, or so it scored some wins: it adopted the Pandemic Treaty without U.S. support, and updated its International Health Regulations. Both provide guidelines for countries to handle outbreaks and pandemics more efficiently.

Now it has to scramble a bit to reorganise funding and make sure it can keep doing its job.

As for the U.S. and Argentina: they might need the WHO sooner than they think… the Nipah virus, which can kill up to 75% of those infected, has broken out in India, and countries are already on alert.

The WHO might be short(er) on cash and members, but when the next outbreak hits, everyone will still need it… whether they like it or not.

If you found this interesting, share it with someone who might enjoy it too!

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Other SAIL posts you might enjoy:

• Can International Law Stop Hantavirus? (In 3 minutes)

• How to Explain the International Law Behind Ebola To Your Friends in 3 Minutes

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