An American emergency physician who contracted Ebola in 2014 and spent 19 days fighting for his life in a Manhattan hospital told ABC News he is "certain" the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is "much bigger" than the reported case counts show, and that Washington's retreat from global health leadership has l
eft the country unprepared to respond.
Dr. Craig Spencer, now a public health professor at Brown University, spoke to ABC News on May 19 as health workers in Goma screened visitors at the Rodolphe Merieux Laboratory, part of the National Biomedical Research Institute, and an unnamed American doctor lay infected with the virus after treating patients in the Congo.
Spencer's blunt assessment carries weight. He is one of a small number of Western physicians who have contracted Ebola, survived, and returned to the front lines. His warning, that the data coming out of the Congo almost certainly understates the crisis, raises hard questions about what American officials know, what they are doing about it, and whether the public is getting a straight answer.
Spencer tested positive for Ebola after treating patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders during the 2014 West African outbreak. He was flown back to the United States and admitted to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, where he spent 19 days under treatment.
He survived. Months later, he went back.
Spencer described that decision in his own words:
"I was lucky enough to survive. And then a few months later, I went back to Guinea. As an epidemiologist helping run the national response for Doctors Without Borders in early 2015."
That personal history is the lens through which Spencer views the plight of the unnamed American doctor now infected in the Congo.
"I unfortunately know exactly what it feels like to be in that situation, to be incredibly fearful, to have a disease that maybe you've seen the impact of and know that there's not a treatment for. I'm thinking of him and his family."
The identity of the infected American doctor has not been publicly released. Neither has the doctor's current medical status nor the precise location within the Congo where the infection occurred. Those gaps matter. Families deserve answers. So does the American public.
Spencer told ABC News his reading of the outbreak data is grim. The speed at which information has surfaced, he said, points to a crisis already well beyond what official tallies reflect.
"My biggest concern about this outbreak is that we learned way too much way too quickly for this to be anything but really bad."
He did not cite a specific case count or death toll, and the ABC News report does not identify which agency is producing the official outbreak numbers Spencer questioned. But his claim that the outbreak is "much bigger" than acknowledged fits a pattern. The World Health Organization has already warned that the spread in the Congo may be worse than initially believed.
That warning eventually escalated. The WHO declared the Congo Ebola outbreak a global health emergency, a designation that signals the international community believes the situation has outpaced local containment capacity.
Spencer's concern about underreporting is not abstract. In remote, conflict-scarred provinces, accurate surveillance is nearly impossible. Earlier phases of the outbreak already proved deadly, with dozens of confirmed fatalities before the crisis drew sustained international attention.
Spencer directed part of his criticism at the U.S. government. He said Washington's decision to pull back from its historically prominent role in global health has left it "flat footed" in responding to this outbreak.
He did not name a specific policy change, budget cut, or executive order. ABC News did not detail which programs or agencies Spencer had in mind. But the charge is clear: the United States, in Spencer's view, is less prepared and less engaged than it should be at a moment when a lethal hemorrhagic virus is spreading in central Africa and has now infected an American citizen.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered a brief public comment on the response. A related ABC News headline from May 19 quoted Kennedy saying, "We're working on it," in reference to the Ebola and hantavirus response. No further detail from Kennedy appeared in the report.
"We're working on it" is not the kind of answer that inspires confidence when a fellow American is fighting Ebola overseas and a veteran of the 2014 crisis is telling the press the outbreak is being undercounted.
Spencer, who works as an ER physician in addition to his academic role at Brown, framed the challenge in practical terms familiar to anyone who has managed a crisis under pressure.
"I'm an emergency physician. I don't want to know who my team is and meet them for the first time at the start of my shift."
The point is straightforward. Relationships, logistics, and institutional knowledge take time to build. You cannot assemble them on the fly when a deadly pathogen is already spreading. Spencer's metaphor, meeting your team for the first time when the shift has already started, is a direct indictment of any approach that treats outbreak response as something you improvise after the alarm sounds.
The U.S. has taken some concrete steps. The CDC invoked Title 42 authority to suspend entry of travelers from Ebola-affected African nations, a border-security measure that recognizes the obvious: when a lethal virus is circulating abroad, controlling who enters the country is not optional.
But border restrictions address only one vector. They do nothing for American medical workers already on the ground in the Congo, and they do not answer the deeper question Spencer raised, whether the institutional infrastructure for rapid, coordinated global health response has been allowed to atrophy.
The ABC News report leaves significant questions unanswered. The current official Ebola case count is not provided. The agency producing those numbers is not identified. The identity and condition of the infected American doctor remain undisclosed. The specific U.S. government actions, or inactions, Spencer referenced are not detailed. And available treatment options for the current strain are not discussed.
The Congo's struggle with Ebola is not new. The country has endured repeated outbreaks, complicated by armed conflict, weak infrastructure, and porous borders. Each new wave tests whether the international community, and the United States in particular, has learned anything from the last one.
Spencer, for his part, said he remains willing to help. But his words carried the weight of a man who has already paid a personal price.
"I've already put my family through quite a bit. We'll see what comes out of this, but I'm happy to help."
That willingness is admirable. It is also a reminder that when governments pull back, the burden falls on individuals, doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, who volunteer to walk into places most people would run from.
Spencer's warning deserves a serious hearing, not because he is infallible, but because he has credibility that few people on earth possess. He contracted the virus. He survived it. He went back into the field. And now he is telling the American public that the outbreak is worse than they are being told.
Whether the current administration's response proves adequate will be measured not by press statements but by outcomes, how many people get sick, how fast the virus spreads, and whether the next American doctor who contracts Ebola has a better support system than the one currently fighting for his life in the Congo.
When a man who nearly died of Ebola says the numbers don't add up, the least Washington can do is show its math.
