The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office updated its South Sudan travel advice on 25 August 2026, adding cross-border Ebola screening information to a country it already tells British nationals to avoid entirely. The change note reads simply: "Updated information about Ebola ('Entry requirements' page)." For a close protection team, a health-security layer over an existing conflict-risk picture is a direct change to how you move people.
South Sudan remains under an FCDO advise-against-all-travel warning "due to the risk of armed violence and criminality," so any team operating or transiting there is already on high-risk protocols. What is new is a set of border and airport measures driven by the outbreak next door. The FCDO notes that neighbouring countries, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, have reported Ebola cases including in areas close to the border with South Sudan, in Western Equatoria State.
The practical measures matter for exfil and medevac timelines. Crossing a land border from DRC or Uganda into South Sudan, the FCDO warns you "may encounter health screening measures such as temperature checks and a request to provide a brief travel history." At Juba International Airport, "some airlines are now asking passengers departing the country to complete a health declaration form." And onward, "some countries have heightened health screening for travellers coming from South Sudan," so an arrival elsewhere can carry its own delay. The UK has activated its Returning Workers Scheme in response to the outbreak, which is relevant to any demobilisation or repatriation of deployed personnel.
The pathogen sets the duty-of-care bar. The World Health Organization confirmed an Ebola outbreak in DR Congo and Uganda in May 2026, and states the Bundibugyo species involved is one "for which there is no vaccine or specific treatment." We could not independently confirm current case totals from a readable WHO primary at the time of writing, so we are not printing a figure we cannot stand behind. The header point for a protection team is unchanged either way: any movement through the DRC, Uganda and South Sudan tri-border now needs a health-screening contingency built into the plan, on top of the armed-violence protocols that were already there.
