BUNIA, CONGO – On a good day, there are only four cars available to ferry surveillance teams round the city of Bunia, the epicenter of an Ebola outbreak surging through the Democratic Republic of Congo.

They were all out when Dr. Moubarack Kano came in to work earlier this month. So he set off in his own white Subaru Forester, with a colleague alongside him, piles of emergency alert forms stuffed into seat pockets and a rosary swinging from the rear-view mirror.

The vehicle shortage was far from Kano’s biggest challenge as they raced to track down infections and limit their spread across a patch with 1 million people in 23 health districts.