NWS Network

NWS is an independent platform for cross-border and investigative journalism. We report overlooked stories from around the world.

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

It took ten extra days to work out what was killing people in eastern #Congo.

The rapid tests used in the field were built to catch the common #Ebola strains, #Zaire and #Sudan. This #outbreak is a rarer one, #Bundibugyo, and the standard tests kept missing it. Only genome sequencing pinned it down. The WHO declared an emergency on May 17, 2026.

@Banjotkaur @GKangInd

https://t.co/Ydt8hjUucu

#DRC #Uganda #GlobalHealth #PublicHealth #GagandeepKang #NWS

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

The #WHO rates the risk to countries outside #Africa as low. One of the world's leading virologists will not go that far.

"I would never say there is no chance of it spreading," @GKangInd, the first Indian woman elected to the Royal Society, told NWS. What stands between the outbreak and everyone else, she said, is airport screening.

@Banjotkaur

https://t.co/Ydt8hjUucu

#Ebola #Bundibugyo #DRC #Uganda #GlobalHealth #PublicHealth #GagandeepKang #NWS

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

Past #Ebola outbreaks were caught faster. Three things made this one different, says virologist @GKangInd.

• The early tests could not detect this strain. It took genome sequencing to identify it.

• The region is rife with #malaria, so the first deaths were blamed on that.

• It is spreading through rural areas, where health facilities barely exist.

@Banjotkaur

https://t.co/Ydt8hjV222

#Bundibugyo #DRC #Uganda #GlobalHealth #PublicHealth #GagandeepKang #NWS

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

695 cases. 138 dead. And the experts say that the count is too low.

An #Ebola outbreak is spreading through eastern #Congo faster than anyone expected. There is no #vaccine for the strain driving it.

https://t.co/Ydt8hjV222

@Banjotkaur @GKangInd

#Bundibugyo #DRC #Uganda #GlobalHealth #PublicHealth #GagandeepKang #NWS

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

Virologist @GKangInd is firm that this is not the next #pandemic, and her reasoning is exact. For the #Ebola outbreak to become one, the #virus would have to mutate enough to change the very way it spreads, and she means many mutations stacking up, not a single one. That is a high bar, and nothing about this strain suggests it has been cleared.

@Banjotkaur

#Bundibugyo #DRC #Uganda #GlobalHealth #PublicHealth #GagandeepKang #NWSfacts

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

There is a loophole inside that 21-day window. Airport screening checks where you have flown in from, but a traveller can leave #Congo, break the journey in a country with no #outbreak, and fly on with a clean-looking ticket. Nobody flags them, and they may fall ill only after arriving. That gap is what honest travel histories are meant to close.

@Banjotkaur @GKangInd

#Ebola #Bundibugyo #DRC #Uganda #GlobalHealth #PublicHealth #WHO #GagandeepKang #NWSfacts

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

Lethality is only half the danger. The big 2014 #epidemic spread through cities; this one is moving through rural areas where clinics and labs barely reach. Lower density sounds safer, but weak detection lets the chain run on unseen.

@Banjotkaur @GKangInd

#Ebola #Bundibugyo #WHO #Uganda #GlobalHealth #PublicHealth #GagandeepKang #NWSfacts

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

The delay was not only about faulty tests. Laboratory cover across this part of #Africa is thin, and the area is endemic for #malaria and other fevers, so when people first started dying the deaths were put down to something more familiar. Only genetic sequencing revealed a rarer strain of #Ebola, and by then it had a long head start.

@Banjotkaur @GKangInd

#Bundibugyo #Uganda #GlobalHealth #WHO #GagandeepKang #NWSfacts

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

It crossed into #Uganda for a simple reason. In these conflict-hit parts of eastern #Congo the government's reach is weak, and people cross the border constantly. That is how a virus born in remote districts reached #Kampala, a capital of millions, where it spreads on very different terms.

@Banjotkaur @GKangInd

#Ebola #Bundibugyo #GlobalHealth #PublicHealth #GagandeepKang #NWSfacts

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

There is a vaccine for #Ebola, but it was made for an earlier form of the virus. This outbreak is a different species, #Bundibugyo, so the shot does not protect against it, and there is no specific drug either, only supportive care.

@Banjotkaur @GKangInd

#Uganda #GlobalHealth #PublicHealth #Congo #GagandeepKang #WHO #SouthAsia #DiseaseSurveillance #NWSFacts

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

The official tally is almost certainly an undercount, and it helps to know why. There are not enough test kits to confirm every #Ebola case, contact tracing is thin across a region with little health cover, and the outbreak probably ran for more than two months before anyone declared an emergency. Detection is still catching up, so the numbers will likely keep rising.

@Banjotkaur @GKangInd

#GlobalHealth #GagandeepKang #Bundibugyo #Uganda #PublicHealth #WHO #NWSfacts #Congo

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

When people first started dying in this outbreak, doctors thought it was malaria.

The region is endemic for it, the lab facilities are poor, and the new Ebola strain slipped past the existing tests. By the time it was identified, the virologist Gagandeep Kang says, it had likely been spreading for over two months.

@GKangInd @Banjotkaur

#Ebola #SouthAsia #PublicHealth #GlobalHealth #EbolaVirus #DiseaseSurveillance #HealthSecurity #infectiousdiseases #bundibugyo #CongoEbola #nwsfacts

https://t.co/Ydt8hjV222

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

There is a vaccine for Ebola. It does not work on this outbreak.

The shot protects against the Zaire species of the virus. The strain spreading through eastern Congo is a different species, Bundibugyo, and the CDC says the vaccine is not expected to protect against it.

#Ebola #SouthAsia #PublicHealth #GlobalHealth #EbolaVirus #DiseaseSurveillance #HealthSecurity #infectiousdiseases #bundibugyo #CongoEbola #nwsfacts

https://t.co/Ydt8hjV222

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

A drone hit Sayeed Azeem's ship. The oil container it struck was empty. A missile narrowly missed the damaged vessel as it fled. When he reached Dubai and quit the sea for good, a missile shut the airport in front of him. He made it home for Ramadan and has not gone back to the water.

The sea he left has not calmed: three more ships attacked in the last three days, Indian sailors aboard.

#IndianSeafarers #MaritimeSecurity #StraitOfHormuz #GulfOfOman #AndhraPradesh #NWSFacts

Read full story:

https://t.co/PcnkNqM1lC

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

₹2 lakh a month. That is what a good ship placement pays in three Andhra coastal villages, and why 70% of their men are at sea.

Nobody ordered them into the war zone. The salary is the order. Weeks ago, about 60 of them were stranded in the Gulf. This week, three ships attacked in three days, Indian crews aboard.

#IndianSeafarers #MaritimeSecurity #StraitOfHormuz #GulfOfOman #AndhraPradesh #NWSFacts

Read full story:

https://t.co/PcnkNqM1lC

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

In the 1950s, a freedom fighter saw British merchant ships at Visakhapatnam port and asked how local men could get aboard. Seventy years later, three villages he touched send most of their sons to sea.

Weeks ago, a mother there heard her son cry on the phone for the first time, his ship destroyed near Hormuz, his life saved by a lifeboat. This week, three more ships with Indian crews were hit in three days. The 70-year bargain is being repriced.

#USIranWar #StraitOfHormuz #PersianGulf #IndianSeafarers #MerchantNavy #MaritimeSecurity #NWSFacts

Read full story:

https://t.co/PcnkNqM1lC

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

@MarioNawfal https://t.co/blVaAhx5Li

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

Three merchant ships attacked in three days this week, Indian sailors aboard. The men on those decks come from somewhere. Often it is a place like three adjoining Andhra villages, where, weeks ago, about 60 men were stranded on ships in the Gulf, some inside the Strait of Hormuz itself.

#Settebello #GulfOfOman #StraitOfHormuz #IndianSeafarers #USNavy #Hormuz #IndiaUS #IndianSailors #MerchantNavy

Read full story: https://t.co/PcnkNqM1lC

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

@MEAIndia https://t.co/blVaAhx5Li

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

Three merchant ships attacked in three days this week, Indian sailors aboard. The men on those decks come from somewhere. Often it is a place like three adjoining Andhra villages, where, weeks ago, about 60 men were stranded on ships in the Gulf, some inside the Strait of Hormuz itself.

#Settebello #GulfOfOman #StraitOfHormuz #IndianSeafarers #USNavy #Hormuz #IndiaUS #IndianSailors #MerchantNavy

Read full story: https://t.co/PcnkNqM1lC

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

@ShashiTharoor https://t.co/blVaAhx5Li

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

Three merchant ships attacked in three days this week, Indian sailors aboard. The men on those decks come from somewhere. Often it is a place like three adjoining Andhra villages, where, weeks ago, about 60 men were stranded on ships in the Gulf, some inside the Strait of Hormuz itself.

#Settebello #GulfOfOman #StraitOfHormuz #IndianSeafarers #USNavy #Hormuz #IndiaUS #IndianSailors #MerchantNavy

Read full story: https://t.co/PcnkNqM1lC

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

@AJENews https://t.co/blVaAhx5Li

[NWS Network @NWS_Network]

Three merchant ships attacked in three days this week, Indian sailors aboard. The men on those decks come from somewhere. Often it is a place like three adjoining Andhra villages, where, weeks ago, about 60 men were stranded on ships in the Gulf, some inside the Strait of Hormuz itself.

#Settebello #GulfOfOman #StraitOfHormuz #IndianSeafarers #USNavy #Hormuz #IndiaUS #IndianSailors #MerchantNavy

Read full story: https://t.co/PcnkNqM1lC