ITURI PROVINCE — In June 2025, the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID) received a stop-work order from the U.S. government, halting its global pandemic preparedness research during an ongoing Ebola outbreak in Ituri Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The order stated the research was deemed “unsafe for Americans and not a good use of taxpayer funding” and no longer aligned with agency priorities.

The current Ebola outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus and has led to at least 1,000 suspected cases and 238 suspected deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with seven confirmed cases, including one death, in Uganda. Public health agencies have struggled to detect early infections because their diagnostic tests targeted the Zaire strain of Ebola, not the Bundibugyo variant.

CREID, established in 2020 by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), operated 10 research sites in outbreak-prone regions, including Central and East Africa, and received approximately $82 million in funding over five years. The network developed reagents and diagnostic tests specifically for viruses like Ebola, and a CREID site in Nairobi played a key role in responding to the September 2022 Uganda Ebola outbreak, which resulted in 164 confirmed infections and 55 deaths.

“We had active studies there. We were covering Eastern and Central Africa. We would have been there.” said M. Kariuki Njenga, a virologist who led the CREID center for that region and is affiliated with Washington State University. “The whole network would have mobilized.” added Robert Garry, professor of microbiology and immunology, who co-led a CREID center.

Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary virologist who led one of two CREID centers in West Africa, said the justification for the stop-work order contradicted the program’s purpose. “That reason is pretty rich, right? Because that was really the kind of pandemic preparedness research that we need to do.” Andersen, whose center focused on Ebola and Lassa viruses, now lacks NIH funding to conduct diagnostics or sequencing and can only review outbreak data remotely. “We sit here in San Diego and see this unfold.” he said.

Although an HHS spokesperson previously stated that NIH would continue funding CREID with new awards in fiscal year 2026, the stop-work order has paused all activities. CREID’s defunding may be linked to its loose association with the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit barred from federal funding in January 2025. One original CREID center was operated by EcoHealth Alliance, which had ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and became central to theories about the origins of COVID-19.