Ebola-treated doctor and family safely return to the United States

The return of Dr. Peter Stafford and his family underscores how tightly Ebola cases are managed from field exposure to medical evacuation and clearance for travel. Stafford, a 39-year-old surgeon who treated patients in eastern Congo, arrived in the United States with his wife, Dr. Rebekah Stafford, and their four children after being treated in Berlin for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola.

Serge, the Pennsylvania-based Christian missions organization that employed Stafford, said he had been Ebola-free since May 30 and was continuing to improve after his release from Charité University Hospital. Stafford said he was “feeling well” and thankful to be reunited with his family. The organization said all of its missionaries and family members serving in the Democratic Republic of Congo had been released from care and monitoring and had safely returned to the United States.

Stafford contracted Ebola while treating patients at Nyankunde Hospital in Bunia, in eastern Congo’s Ituri Province, where the outbreak had already set off alarm over hundreds of suspected cases and more than 100 deaths. Public-health officials and the World Health Organization warned that the outbreak had become serious enough to warrant a global public health emergency, even as they continued to stress that Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids and that the risk to the American public remained low.

He was flown to Berlin on May 19 or May 20 and treated in Charité’s specialized isolation unit with antiviral therapy and supportive care. The hospital said his condition improved steadily and that no virus was detected in follow-up tests after May 30. That sequence, from evacuation to isolation to repeated negative testing, reflects the standard safeguards used to move a recovered patient only after infection is no longer detected and the person is stable enough to travel.

His wife and the couple’s four children tested negative, remained asymptomatic and were monitored separately. That separation is a critical part of Ebola response because close contacts can be exposed even when they do not become ill. The careful monitoring of the Stafford family, along with the medical evacuation from Congo to Germany and then back to the United States, shows how public-health systems work together across borders to protect both patients and the public.

Stafford had served with Serge since 2023 and previously worked with Samaritan’s Purse’s post-residency program in Togo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Serge executive director Matt Allison said the organization remains focused on mobilizing medical support and resources for partners in Congo, a reminder that the crisis continues for health workers and families still in the outbreak zone even as one of their own comes home safely.