Opinion: Ebola outbreak response requires engaging with religious traditions and leaders

OpinionFirst Opinion Ebola outbreak response requires engaging with religious traditions and leaders Burial and funeral rites are a crucial part of how Ebola ignites and spreads Manage alerts for this article Email this article Share this article By Olivia Wilkinson and Katherine MarshallJune 12, 2026 Wilkinson is senior fellow at the Faith and Global Health Initiative, Georgetown University Global Health Institute. Marshall is professor of practice at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Ebola can be called the disease of compassion: It “spreads through acts of care” like tending to a sick loved one and burying those who died of the disease. It is also a disease in which mistrust, misinformation, and fear run rampant, leading to attacks on health care facilities and frantic efforts to recover bodies of Ebola victims. Religious and traditional leaders, who oversee burial and funeral rites, are often the most trusted voices in their communities. They need to be engaged immediately as the Ebola outbreak spreads rapidly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.Advertisement As researchers on faith and global health, we’ve researched this field for decades and know that failing to engage these key groups in meaningful ways was a grave misstep in previous Ebola outbreaks. The response to Ebola cannot be effective without engaging trusted, local leadership. Religious leadership and religious communities are necessary parts of that response. Burial and funeral rites are moments when Ebola spreads rapidly, because people can come into contact with bodily fluids from the deceased. One study estimated that 2.58 further infections occur for every unsafely performed burial. Death and rites connected to it are deeply intertwined in the social and spiritual fabric of a community. Without understanding people’s complex emotions and social responsibilities regarding illness and death, emergency responses overlook a crucial part of how a disease outbreak ignites and spreads. Burial traditions are particularly relevant in the case of Ebola. As people express their grief, social obligations compel them to help prepare the deceased for burial, including touching and washing the body, as is traditional in the affected countries; visit the deceased’s family; and attend funerals. People are willing to ignore public health messages warning about Ebola’s risks, as “infection [is] preferable to displeasing ancestors or disobeying God.” In Ituri, DRC, people are attacking health facilities because burial traditions were not respected; a poignant example is a coordinated attack by community members on a clinic demanding that a religious leader’s body be released for burial.Advertisement In 2014, as Ebola spread in West Africa, failing to respect religious practices had profound consequences. WHO guidance applied there stated that religious practices should be disregarded in favor of infection control measures, but this was not tenable advice. For instance, a well-regarded Sierra Leonean traditional healer, attending to patients with suspected Ebola, fell ill and died herself. Subsequently over 300 people connected to her funeral died of Ebola, too. As the epidemic and global fears associated with it spread, WHO worked with different religious groups to revise their guidance, producing a practical protocol for safe and dignified burials, with specifications adapted for Muslim and Christian communities. Current guidance calls for religious representatives and mediators to accompany burial teams “to act as a bridge between biomedical and religious worlds.” The updated guidance and practice were a game-changer for the West African Ebola crisis, demonstrating the vital importance of respectful and adapted burial practices. A study in Sierra Leone found that religious leaders’ messages on Ebola led to “a nearly twofold increase in the intention to accept safe alternatives to traditional burials and the intention to wait ≥ 2 days for burial teams.” Qualitative research backs up these numbers. Trust is a key factor, as one U.N. staff member in Sierra Leone in 2014 put it: “Because people trust them, when [religious leaders] started participating in the revised burial practices, people knew they could trust it and resistance ended. The participation of religious leaders was a game-changer.” This calls for two main and pressing actions in DRC: 1. NGOs and health authorities implementing Ebola response programs should undertake a rapid religious-dynamics analysis focused specifically on how traditional and religious beliefs influence perceptions of illness and death, practices related to caring for the sick, and funeral and burial rites in the area. Who are key religious players to engage as partners? A guide developed for Covid-19 is relevant for any public health emergency with questions to orient a rapid religious dynamics analysis.Advertisement 2. NGOs should engage community and religious leaders at every decision point as early and immediately as possible. Many religious actors, including faith-based health care facilities and faith-based organizations, are already at work in eastern Congo on direct response and community engagement. Partnerships with religious actors should not be crisis driven, but established and shored up over the years. That happens too rarely, but it is never too late to build partnerships, as previous Ebola and Covid-19 responses have demonstrated. Guidance materials for activities in such partnerships are available. ( For example, “Faith in the Time of Ebola/La Foi en temps d’Ebola” is a guide for Christian religious leaders in the DRC to help them discuss Ebola prevention and burials through Bible studies.) Recommendations for the longer term include systems strengthening with faith-based health care systems, including religious actors in disease surveillance systems, and looking to include religious actors in planning and coordination mechanisms. For the current crisis, acting to understand and to engage burial practices, with a clear religious lens, is by far the most pressing. Olivia Wilkinson is senior fellow at the Faith and Global Health Initiative, Georgetown University Global Health Institute. Katherine Marshall is professor of practice at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Letter to the editor Have an opinion on this essay? Submit a letter to the editor. global health, infectious diseases Submit a correction requestReprints Olivia Wilkinson Katherine Marshall Newsletter The smartest thinkers in life sciences on what's happening — and what's to come Recommended First Opinion June 12, 2026 I’ve spent 40 years in research. I have never seen a threat to science like the new grantmaking rule First Opinion June 11, 2026 We published in Nature Medicine in 2025 for free. 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