LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - With an Ebola epidemic raging and millions caught in a forgotten “catastrophe” of conflict and hunger, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was the most neglected crisis of 2018, according to an annual Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of aid agencies. “I visited Congo this year and have seldom witnessed such a gap between needs and assistance.”

Congo, where 13 million people in a population of 82 million need help, also topped the annual Thomson Reuters Foundation poll in 2017, but agencies said the situation had deteriorated. An upsurge of fighting in the east of the mineral-rich part of Democratic Republic of the Congo has exacerbated the spread of the world’s second largest Ebola outbreak.
The annual Thomson Reuters poll among aid agencies shows that the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with its war, hunger and Ebola outbreak, is perceived as the most neglected crisis of 2018. The Central African Republic, with its civil war, is a close second.