UN News Today 16 June 2026 |

‘Some people question whether Ebola is real’: trust is central in fighting DRC outbreak

The race to beat the latest Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), will hinge on earning the community’s trust first and foremost, aid teams stressed on Tuesday.

In Bunia, the epicentre of the crisis in the country’s east, “some people still question whether the disease is real”, said Bruno Michon, Operations Manager for the Ebola response, at UN partner, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. 

“Following community feedback, we started using body bags with a window so that the family can see the face of the deceased and begin to process the grieving. When communities told us they feared that chlorine was used to poison them, we did not argue. We demonstrated how disinfectants are prepared.” 

Boosting existing testing capacity is another crucial factor in preventing transmission of infection and testing for the virus is now available in several locations in eastern DRC, in addition to the capital Kinshasa.

The UN World Health Organization said that there is still room for improvement in tracing infected individuals as some “blind spots” exist. “There may be transmission chains that are not being detected” and they need to be found, the agency said.

Hormuz shipping crisis unresolved anchored as world’s strategic reserves hit dangerously low levels 

As the world waits for a reported deal between Iran and the United States to kick in, UN economists warned that global stocks of fuel and fertilizers are already at “dangerously low levels”.

According to the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), strategic reserves of fuel have fallen to 357 million barrels per day, some of the lowest levels held since the early 1980s.

A summer heatwave in the northern hemisphere linked to the El Niño weather phenomenon could trigger a new wave of crisis, said UNECE’s Dario Liguti, Director of the Energy, Land and Housing Division:

“If the situation continues like that with the Strait of Hormuz being closed to a large volume of traffic … we will see a high crisis and sharper shortages around the world, much larger than the level we experience today.”

Mr. Liguti noted that apart from higher prices, the world has not yet seen widespread shortages of fuel or fertilizer.

This is partly because overland supply via pipelines or trucks have offset the shipping shortages, while producers in Africa, the United States and Venezuela have made up some of the difference.

Another factor is that increasingly expensive fuel and fertilizers have caused demand for them to plummet, particularly in South Asia and Southeast Asia, UNECE data shows.

But the agency warns that the drop in demand has been relatively small so far and that countries will soon need to start stocking up for winter.

Even if the situation in the Strait (of Hormuz) were to return to normal now, “prices will continue to remain high and further shortages will continue appearing, particularly in local markets, at least for a few months” Mr. Liguti insisted.

UN aid chief Fletcher urges G7 leaders to act as millions face crisis 

An urgent appeal now from UN emergency relief chief Tom Fletcher to G7 leaders meeting in France, amid historic funding shortfalls for aid work to help the world’s most vulnerable people.

In his statement, Mr. Fletcher said that the UN has been forced to make painful choices about who gets assistance. 

Half-way into the year, only around $10.3 billion of the $23 billion ask has been raised. This means that 24 million people have been reached – but 63 million “are still waiting”, he stressed – “Waiting for food. Waiting for shelter. Waiting for education for their children…(and) waiting for protection from violence.”

Mr. Fletcher maintained that it was “not expensive” to plug the funding gap, which was the equivalent of 3.5 days of global spending on arms and defence, or about half of Wall Street’s annual bonuses “and less than five per cent of what the world spends each year on fizzy soft drinks”.

Daniel Johnson, UN News