A New York doctor who survived Ebola says he is afraid of health workers treating the virus

A New York doctor who contracted and survived Ebola more than a decade ago says he is worried about health workers at an Ebola treatment center. the latest outbreak in the remote eastern province of the Congo.

“Health workers are the group I am most concerned about because they were very close to people when they were infected, especially during the death of people,” Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency room physician and professor of public health at Brown University, told CBS News on Friday.

Authorities in Congo's eastern province of Ituri are dealing with a new suspected Ebola outbreak that has at least 246 cases, including 65 deaths, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Friday.

This is the 17th Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976. One of the worst diseases that has affected more than 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016.

“What we know for sure is that the country has information, but the region where it happens is very volatile with the ongoing humanitarian situation and the number of people moving from South Sudan to Uganda and other parts,” Dr. Abdi Rahman Mahamud, the World Health Organization's director of health emergencies and response operations, said during a press conference on Friday.

Spencer contracted Ebola while working with the non-profit group Doctors Without Borders in Guinea in September 2014. He was in Guinea for three weeks working with Ebola patients.

When he returned to New York City the following month, arriving home on October 17, 2014, he said he began checking on himself, taking his temperature twice a day.

Then on October 23, 2014, less than a week after returning home, he developed a fever and was rushed by ambulance to Bellevue Hospital, the Ebola treatment center at the time.

Health officials inspected and removed the contamination from his house, his fiancee at the time and two of her friends were placed in isolation.

“The one I got infected with, the Zaire strain, seems to have a lot more people dying, but they all show the same signs of fatigue. [that] eventually leading to vomiting, diarrhea, extreme weakness and weight loss,” Spencer said.

He he was hospitalized in Bellevue for 19 days as well made a full recovery. He was treated with a combination of antibiotics and experimental drugs, as well as a blood transfusion from an Ebola survivor.

“Let me tell you, 19 days in a room by yourself, with no small window, small screen … with operators coming in several times a day in space suits. That's your only human contact,” Spencer said. “I'm lucky though, because I'm alive, and most of the people who contracted Ebola are not, especially the people I cared for in West Africa and Guinea at the time.”

According to CBS News health reporter Dr. Céline Gounder, the latest outbreak is believed to be a strain known as Bundibugyo ebolavirus, or BDV. Gounder says the strain has been responsible for only two known outbreaks before this, the 2007 outbreak in Uganda with 55 cases and the 2012 outbreak in Congo with 57 cases.

He said there are no approved vaccines or treatments for BDV.

“Medical professionals seem to be very concerned about the possibility or ability to contain this,” Gounder said. “It's a big riot as we hear about it. There are already a number of people who have died. And this is a type of Ebola that we have no cure for, with vaccinations.”

The Africa CDC reported that out of only 20 samples tested so far, 13 have been confirmed positive.

The US has been the single largest foreign player in the response to Ebola outbreaks in the past, but now experts are worried about the impact of the Trump administration. disbanding of the US Agency for International Development again its withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organization.

Spencer said he believes there may be a connection between the USAID shutdown and the fact that the latest outbreak was not officially announced until Friday. He said it is also worrying that the White House does not have a director for its Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Gerald Parker, who was photographed by Trump office management in February 2025, he resigned later that year, and the position has not been filled.

“Right now, we don't have that ability,” he said of the immediate response to the outbreak. “We don't have a director or anyone else in the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response. We don't have a liaison across the State Department and the CDC, and our relationships with outside actors and the WHO. We've thrown away a lot of those lessons that we've learned the hard way over the last decade, and over the last five years.”

Before the recent actions of the Trump administration, Spencer said, it is possible that the US would have had officials from USAID and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the ground in the Congo before the outbreak.

“Before the second Trump administration, USAID would be down,” Spencer said. “The CDC would have been sitting down when we knew, maybe even before the announcement of the new Ebola outbreak because we were in a group of countries. We built relationships before.”

Despite those problems, Spencer said he believes the US can still deal with a virus like Ebola, which he says is “not that good at spreading” despite the high death rate. He noted America's response this month outbreak of deadly hantavirus on a Dutch cruise ship. The 18 Americans who were on board are currently being monitored in isolation at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

“We've seen in the last few weeks with the isolation unit we have in Nebraska and the more than a dozen facilities we have in the US that can handle high-impact viruses like hantavirus and Ebola,” Spencer said. “These were all commitments that we made as a country, mainly and in part because of cases like mine a decade ago.”