This commentary examines what recent Hantavirus and Ebolavirus outbreaks reveal about weaknesses in international health preparedness. The Andes virus cluster linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship showed that even a rare rodent-borne disease can become a cross-border concern when passengers and crew travel. The Ebola outbreak in Central Africa highlighted how high-fatality outbreaks become harder to control when health systems are fragile. Together, the two outbreaks show that global health security cannot be built on pandemic planning alone. It must also address zoonotic spillover, travel-linked clusters, biosafety, biosecurity, pathogen sharing, and equitable access to countermeasures. The article argues that the International Health Regulations and the WHO Pandemic Agreement remain important but incomplete, especially while the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing framework remains unsettled. 

Introduction

The world has witnessed the chaos during the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed nearly 7.1 million people worldwide so far and has overwhelmed every country with intermittent lethal waves between 2020 and 2023.[i] Deadly pathogens like the SARS Coronavirus exposed the weakness of global health governance. These hidden, unreported pathogens spread through people, animals, healthcare facilities, borders, and laboratories worldwide. Yet the international architecture designed to manage global health crises and emergencies remains divided into separate blocks: public health, emergency response, biosafety, biosecurity, trade, development, and disarmament.  The recent outbreaks of the Hantavirus and Ebolavirus highlight the dangers posed by the fragmented global health response. 

Hantavirus (Ushuaia, Argentina)

In mid-April 2026, information emerged about a severe acute respiratory illness aboard the Dutch-flagged cruise ship MV Hondius, which departed from Ushuaia, Argentina’s southernmost town known as the “end of the world,” with nearly 150 passengers and crew. By mid-May, a total of 10 cases had been reported, comprising eight confirmed and two probable cases, along with three fatalities. The illness was attributed to a deadly Andes strain of Hantavirus (ANDV).[ii] The previous occurrence of this strain's deadly impact in Argentina was from November 2018 to February 2019, when Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome spread through person-to-person contact in Chubut Province, causing 32 confirmed cases and 12 fatalities.[iii]

Hantavirus is not usually a pandemic- causing pathogen and is mainly transmitted to humans through contact with contaminated urine, droppings, or saliva from infected rodents, with risk heightened by activities such as cleaning poorly ventilated spaces, farming, forestry work, or sleeping in rodent-infested dwellings.[iv]  With Hantavirus, the chain of risk spans ecology, housing, labor conditions, land use, sanitation, rat control, and clinical diagnosis. 

Ebolavirus (Bundibugyo, Uganda) 

Much like the Hantavirus situation, the ongoing Ebola outbreak that began in Bundibugyo, Uganda, and later spread into neighboring countries underscores the significant challenges that deadly pathogens pose to public health. As of mid-May 2026, the World Health Organization reported eight laboratory-confirmed cases, 246 suspected cases, and 80 suspected deaths in Ituri Province, as well as two confirmed cases in Kampala, Uganda. Unconfirmed estimates, however, suggest considerably higher numbers, with approximately 900 suspected cases and over 200 suspected deaths reported by May 25, 2026, primarily concentrated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. [v]

The outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The WHO also reported deaths among health workers (e.g., three Red Cross volunteers died initially), uncertainty about the true extent of the spread, and the absence of a licensed vaccine or specific therapeutics for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebolavirus. On May 25, 2026, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a warning that 11 African nations are currently at risk amid an ongoing Ebola outbreak. Officials from the World Health Organization emphasized the need for international collaboration, cautioning that “no single country can respond to this magnitude of outbreak alone.” Unlike Hantavirus, Ebolavirus remains a severe and often fatal disease, with the WHO estimating an average case fatality rate of around 50 percent. However, rates have varied from 25 to 90 percent in past outbreaks. The 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic remains the defining example of how delayed detection, weak health systems, porous borders, fear, unsafe burials, and slow international mobilization can turn a local outbreak into a regional disaster. It killed more than 11,000 people and exposed the poor condition of health systems in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. That outbreak remained the largest Ebola epidemic since the virus was identified in 1976, with more cases and deaths than all previous Ebola outbreaks combined.[vi]

These two pathogens remain among the most lethal biological entities ever discovered because they trigger widespread structural collapse rather than localized inflammation, turning the body's defenses against itself. While Ebola paralyzes the immune response and destroys blood vessels, causing massive internal bleeding and fatal systemic shock, Hantavirus targets the vasculature of the lungs or kidneys, triggering a hyper-immune response that floods the respiratory air sacs with plasma, essentially suffocating the patient from the inside.

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Animesh Roul is the Executive Director of the Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict, New Delhi.