Africa: Conflicts Can Spread Infectious Diseases While Making Outbreaks Harder to Detect

What the report says

AllAfrica republished a 29 July 2026 analysis from The Conversation Africa warning that armed conflict can both accelerate infectious-disease spread and make outbreaks harder to detect. The article opens with an Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo that crossed into Uganda and may have gone unnoticed for weeks; Médecins Sans Frontières reported in May 2026 that at least 55 people had died since early April. The WHO Director-General declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on 17 May.

Authors Umit Seven and Luis Martinez Juarez said the outbreak occurred in an area where fighting had weakened clinics, laboratories and reporting systems. They reviewed WHO Disease Outbreak News reports from 1996 to 2024 and compared them with armed-conflict records across 236 countries and territories. They stressed that the WHO archive captures selected reported events, not every outbreak, so their findings reflect visibility as well as disease occurrence.

The analysis found that some diseases, including polio and cholera, were reported more often during or after conflicts, consistent with disruptions to vaccination, clean water, sanitation and healthcare access. The authors noted Yemen’s large cholera epidemic as an example of how war can damage water systems, displace communities and interrupt care. They also said patterns were strongest in sub-Saharan Africa, while cautioning that climate, wildlife, local disease ecology and reporting capacity may also shape the data.

One counterintuitive finding was that influenza was reported less often during conflict. The authors said this should not be read as proof that flu spreads less in wartime; instead, conflict may close laboratories, reduce testing, block clinic access and weaken national reporting. Their broader conclusion is that outbreak maps show not only where disease is present, but also where surveillance systems are still able to see it.