There is a moment in every epidemic when the battle is not yet lost. It is not when the hospital is full. It is not when the laboratory confirms the sample. It is not when the World Health Organisation declares an emergency. The decisive moment often comes much earlier. It comes when a mother wakes with fever and weakness and wonders, “Is this malaria, exhaustion, or something dangerous?”

It comes when a young man begins vomiting but is afraid to report it because he has seen what happens to families labelled as Ebola contacts. It comes when a body is prepared for burial, and relatives believe love means touching, washing, carrying, and honouring the dead in the traditional way. In that moment, Ebola does not spread because science is absent. It spreads because trust is absent. This is the crisis now facing parts of the Democratic Republic ...