The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is experiencing “a catastrophic collision of disease and conflict” according to the World Health Organisation. The rapidly spreading outbreak of Ebola there is greatly compounded by conflict within this vast country of 115 million inhabitants over gold, rare minerals and ethnic divisions. Both risk spreading to neighbouring states when medical supplies are critically scarce, US and European aid budgets for healthcare have been cut and geopolitical competition for minerals is intensifying.Ten other African countries are at risk of infection, the African Union’s health agency has warned, naming Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia. Neighbouring Uganda has closed its border with the DRC in what looks a vain attempt to close off movement. Rwanda is involved in the ethnic conflicts in the DRC, running a proxy force in Kivu province based on older Tutsi-Hutu ethnic divisions. Competition between huge Chinese and US investments in critical minerals and gold mining feeds into these regional conflicts.That makes it into a potential world problem, not only a Congolese or African one. Sums of up to $500 million are required to detect, isolate and provide accurate information and medical facilities for communities already rent asunder by rivalries, mass displacements and mistrust of governments. The provinces of Ituri and North Kivu most affected by these conflicts are particularly prone to the disease. Ebola is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person and has a high fatality rate, estimated by some to be as much as 50 per cent. There is no approved vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain driving the outbreak, with thousands infected and many hundreds of death.Neither the Congolese nor neighbouring governments can provide the help required, while WHO and other international organisations lack the resources to do so. If a catastrophe is to be avoided, the world will have to take this collision of disease and conflict much more seriously.