An American missionary doctor working at a Christian hospital near the center of the new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has contracted the deadly disease.
Dr. Peter Stafford, a surgeon and burn specialist at Nyankunde Hospital, is among more than 500 Ebola cases documented in recent weeks in what the World Health Organization has described as a global emergency. Cases have also popped up in Uganda. At least 131 people have died.
Stafford has been evacuated from Congo, according to his sending mission agency Serge. The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention’s head of Ebola response, Dr. Satish K. Pillai, shared that an unnamed American working in Congo had been evacuated to Germany.
Nyankunde Hospital, an evangelical hospital affiliated with the Christian Health Service Corps, is in Bunia, about 25 miles south of the Ebola outbreak epicenter in Ituri Province. Stafford was the only surgeon on staff at the hospital, according to Nyankunde’s website. He has served there since 2023, Serge stated.
Faith-based hospitals and health clinics like Nyankunde make up at least half of the health sector in Congo, studies estimate.
Two other Serge physicians there were exposed, according to the missions agency: Stafford’s wife, obstetrician-gynecologist Rebekah Stafford, and Dr. Patrick Rochelle. Neither has tested positive, and they are quarantined. The Staffords have four young children.
Serge executive director Matt Allison said the agency’s staff know the region well and have served in previous Ebola outbreaks.
“Our hearts are with the Stafford family and with the Congolese communities facing this outbreak,” Allison said in a statement. “Peter and Rebekah have faithfully served vulnerable communities in Nyankunde with extraordinary compassion and courage. We are deeply grateful for the medical teams, government agencies, and international partners working together to provide care, contain the outbreak, and protect lives.”
The virus has a high mortality rate, and its symptoms are horrific, with seriously ill patients experiencing diarrhea, vomiting, and hemorrhaging. This outbreak represents a rare strain, the Bundibugyo virus, which evades normal Ebola testing that looks for the more common Zaire strain.
Medicines and a vaccine exist for the Zaire strain, developed in part as a result of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014. Experts are not sure what treatment will work on the Bundibugyo strain.
Congolese doctor Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum was central to the research to develop those tools to fight Ebola. American missionaries who survived in 2014 also participated in CDC research in the US to develop a cure.
Nancy Writebol is one of them. She was a missionary at Eternal Love Winning Africa (ELWA) Hospital in Liberia during the 2014–2016 outbreak that killed 11,000 and was the largest Ebola outbreak on record.
Writebol and several other Americans at the hospital contracted Ebola, and she survived it after being evacuated to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Her husband David Writebol was exposed to the virus through her, like with the Staffords. But he never contracted the virus.
Writebol recalled the feeling of guilt of being evacuated, and she said she hoped the Staffords would know that feelings of guilt, sorrow, and questioning God are normal.
“There’s always that pain and that hurt,” she said. “I’m being evacuated, but the people I’m serving cannot be. … You grieve for the people you’ve left, knowing they are not receiving the same kind of help that you are undergoing. That’s one of the struggles. But at the same time you’re thankful for mission organizations that care for their people.”
The isolation was tough, she recalled. When she was evacuated, she had no one but the doctors caring for her to interact with, and she was so sick she couldn’t really talk. Eventually when she made it to Emory, she was able to debrief with another Ebola patient and missionary, Dr. Kent Brantley.
She didn’t realize until she got to Emory how the story had become global news. She watched along to see how people in Liberia were doing.
The Ebola outbreak in Liberia decimated much-needed health workers for an already fragile medical system. That meant the collateral damage went beyond Ebola, with the loss of doctors who could treat patients with other medical emergencies.
Dr. Rick Sacra was one American missionary delivering babies at ELWA who also contracted Ebola in 2014 and had to be evacuated. He survived.
When I visited Liberia in 2019, five years after what Liberians called “Ebola times,” ELWA Hospital’s campus church still had tanks of bleach mixed with water for parishioners to wash their hands in, a reminder of the fight against the disease.
Christian health workers are often on the front lines because these faith-based centers play an outsized role in African health sectors.
A Liberian doctor and Christian, Jerry Brown, worked at ELWA’s Ebola unit—which became the main Ebola treatment center for the capital—at a time when that brought great stigma. He went on to head a major government hospital and was named a Time Person of the Year along with other Ebola fighters. Other health workers died at ELWA.
Writebol now leads trauma-healing education for the mission agency SIM around the world, drawing from her experience of living through Ebola. She’s done training with pastors in Ebola-stricken places in Congo, and knows the heaviness of their situation.
“We know the Lord holds us, no matter what happens,” she said.
The Congo Ministry of Public Health has years of experience fighting Ebola, including a major outbreak in Kivu in 2018. Other international Christian groups are activating supplies and medical staff, with World Relief saying it had initiated an “all hands regional response” to the outbreak.
While health systems respond to the outbreak, the emotional human response matters too, Writebol said.
“When you’re in the first part of the whole crisis, you’re just trying to manage the crisis,” she said. But later, “one of the most important parts is, especially for [Stafford’s] wife and kids, is for someone to just sit and listen to them, and let them tell their story.”
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