In Congo displacement camp, fighting Ebola with sand, oatmeal and one thermometer but no water

BUNIA, Congo (AP) — There is one handwashing station and one infrared thermometer to fight the Ebola epidemic in a camp for 10,000 displaced people in Bunia, a city at the heart of the outbreak in eastern Congo.

Camp leaders say they tell residents to wash their hands before eating — with soap for the lucky ones who have it. For the rest, the advice is to use oatmeal or sand.

“My fear is that we are here with nothing to protect ourselves. We have no protection, no water or soap, and we live near garbage," Francine Leve Janguzi, a resident of the so-called ISP camp told The Associated Press, as she opened an empty tap in a sea of tarpaulin roofs.

Supplies are being rushed to Ituri province as aid groups and healthcare workers try to stem an outbreak of the infectious disease that has been declared a global health emergency.

But front-line responders are concerned the disease might spread to the large displacement camps located near Bunia, where thousands of people are crammed into limited space, without access to basic hygiene.

“Eastern DRC’s years of conflict and displacement have left health systems on their knees, and that makes containing this outbreak all the harder,” said Heather Kerr, Congo director with the International Rescue Committee.

Almost a million people have been displaced from their homes by conflict in Ituri, according to the U.N.

That means this Ebola outbreak is “unfolding in communities already facing insecurity, displacement and fragile healthcare systems,” said Gabriela Arenas, a regional coordinator at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The majority of residents of the ISP camp — which owes its name to its proximity to the Higher Pedagogical Institute, or Institut Superieur Pedagogique in French — were forced to leave their villages in the Djugu territory following attacks by CODECO, one of the multiple armed groups which operate in the region.

“I’ve been here for eight and a half years. Now we’re hearing about Ebola,” camp resident Janguzi said. “Look at the state of where we’re sleeping. We don’t have any help whatsoever. We don’t have soap or water, yet we’re told to wash our hands regularly and be clean.”

There is no vaccine or treatment for the rare Bundibugyo type of Ebola, which has been spreading undetected for weeks in eastern Congo. Standard tests struggle to detect the Bundibugyo.

Over 1,000 suspected cases and at least 220 deaths had already been recorded as of Tuesday, including seven confirmed cases in Uganda. But the World Health Organization and aid groups on the ground say the outbreak is much larger.

Ebola is a highly contagious virus and can be contracted from bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare but severe and often fatal. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle pain, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pain and unexplained bleeding or bruising.

Eastern Congo has for years seen attacks by dozens of separate rebel and militant groups, some of them with links to foreign countries or the extremist Islamic State group.

The Rwanda-backed M23 rebels are in control of parts of the region. While the Congolese government still largely controls the northeastern Ituri Province, the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak, that control is tenuous. The Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan Islamist group linked to IS, is one of the dominant rebel groups there and responsible for violent attacks against civilian targets.

Before the outbreak, humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said in an assessment that the insecurity in Ituri had worsened recently, causing doctors and nurses to flee and leaving overwhelmed health facilities and in some parts, “catastrophic conditions.”

Gérard Maki, a community leader in the camp, told AP the disease is very frightening. "I’ve learned that there’s no cure, which is why it scares me. ... Our government should also do everything possible to find a solution to this disease.”

Pronczuk reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writer Jean-Yves Kamale contributed to this report from Kinshasa.

For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

A woman walks in the camp on the property of the city's ISP (Institut Supérieur Pédagogique) where internally displaced people reside in Bunia, Congo, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Internally displaced children play with a broken water pump at the camp on the property of the city's ISP (Institut Supérieur Pédagogique) in Bunia, Congo, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

A woman carrying a child walks through the camp on the property of the city's ISP (Institut Supérieur Pédagogique), where internally displaced people reside in Bunia, Congo, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Olivier Nkakudulu, Country Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Ituri province, works in his office in Bunia, Congo, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Machozi Naumi, 45, raises awareness of Ebola in the camp on the property of the city's ISP (Institut Supérieur Pédagogique), where internally displaced people reside in Bunia, Congo, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

NEW YORK (AP) — The typical CEO compensation package rose nearly 6% in 2025 to $17.7 million, as company boards rewarded their top executives for bigger profits and higher stock prices, and gave them incentives to stick around and make even more money for shareholders.

The median employee at companies in the S&P 500 earned $89,744, reflecting a 4.7% increase year over year. While that gain outpaced the rate of inflation in 2025, many workers were still feeling pinched by the accumulation of higher prices over the past few years and had to cut corners to make ends meet and run up credit card debt to pay for everyday necessities.

The Associated Press’ CEO compensation survey, which uses data analyzed for The AP by Equilar, included pay data for 337 executives at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive fiscal years at their companies, which filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and April 30.

Here's a look at some highlights from the survey.

At half the companies in AP’s survey it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale 200 years to make what the CEO did in one, up from 192 years in last year's survey. Companies have been required to disclose this so-called pay ratio since 2018.

While the biggest gaps occur at companies where the CEO received compensation loaded with one-time awards of stock, the pay ratio also tends to be highest at companies in industries where wages are typically low. For instance, at Coca-Cola, its CEO earned nearly 1,739 times the median pay of $17,947 for its workers. The CEO at the retailer TJX Cos. makes about 1,774 times what a worker making the company’s median pay does.

Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies, noted in an email that there are ballot initiative campaigns in San Francisco and Los Angeles to raise taxes on companies with sizable gaps between CEO and worker pay.

“At a time when working families are struggling with rising costs, it’s obscene to see CEO pay continuing to skyrocket,” Anderson wrote.

Overall, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers in the U.S. rose 3.4% through 2025, according to the Labor Department. The average worker in the U.S. makes $67,000 a year. That figure rises to $96,000 when benefits such as health care and other insurance are included.

While many people may think of a pay package as consisting of salary, bonus and some perks, those components make up only a small percentage of pay for the modern CEO.

Many companies have heeded calls from shareholders to tie CEO compensation more closely to performance. As a result, a large proportion of pay packages consist of stock awards, which the CEO often can’t cash in for years, if at all, unless the company meets certain targets, typically a higher stock price or market value or improved operating profits. And if the CEO delivers on those metrics, companies often give them one-time rewards as incentives to stay on and not look for a bigger payday elsewhere.

Shareholders can weigh in on a CEO's pay package through “say on pay” votes at a company's annual meeting. But the votes are non-binding and most pay plans pass with overwhelming support. The average “yes” vote at companies in this year's survey was around 90%.

As CEO pay has grown significantly over the past few decades, criticism of the lofty payouts has largely come from worker advocates and certain members of Congress.

Elon Musk's pay package is so extraordinary that even the pope weighed in.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla, received compensation valued at $132.3 billion, all in the form of stock awards. To actually get the shares, Musk must meet ambitious targets over the next 10 years for the company's market value and Tesla's electric vehicles, as well as his futuristic goals of developing a fleet of robotaxis and an army of humanoid robots.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shankh Mitra of Welltower received the second-largest compensation package in the survey at $821.1 million, the bulk of it in stock awards. Since October 2020, when he became CEO of the healthcare real estate investment trust, and October 2025, Welltower's stock price tripled. Mitra can only receive the full compensation, beyond a $110,000 annual salary, after a 10-year period.

CEO Hock Tan's pay package at Broadcom, valued at $205.3 million, covers the years 2028-2030 — companies assign a value at the time the package is awarded — and is tied to Tan's ability to greatly increase the revenue Broadcom generates from artificial intelligence, making it one of the few companies at this time to use AI as a benchmark in its compensation plans.

“Use of AI considerations or metrics in incentive plans has not yet taken hold as a majority practice,” said Kelly Malafis, founding partner at Compensation Advisory Partners, in an email, although she expects that could change going forward.

David Zaslav was at the center of a takeover battle that ended with him selling Warner Bros. to Paramount Skydance for $31 a share, up from $12.54 before reports of Paramount’s interest in a deal came out. For negotiating the deal at a premium and also exceeding certain financial and strategic goals, Warner gave Zaslav a pay package valued at $165 million, fourth largest in the survey. Since becoming CEO in 2007, Zaslav's compensation has totaled $1.1 billion, according to Equilar.

CEOs of three the nation's biggest banks got rewarded for yearslong efforts to retool their companies and revive a stagnant stock price.

Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon's pay package totaled almost $119 million — including stock valued at $80 million he can receive after five years. Goldman's board pointed to the 57% gain in the company's shares, as well as a hefty increase in its earnings per share. Solomon also sold off the company's Apple Card portfolio after an unsuccessful effort to expand Goldman's consumer-focused business.

Jane Fraser of Citigroup received a pay package valued at $95.8 million — tops among the 27 women CEOs in this year's survey and the highest-ever for a woman CEO in the survey's history. Fraser received a one-time award valued at $25 million in restricted stock and options after being elected Citi's chairman. She also got a one-time award for overseeing a wholesale reorganization of Citi into a leaner company, including laying off thousands of workers.

Overall, the median compensation for women CEOs in the survey fell 2.6% to $18.1 million, compared to a 6.4% increase for their male counterparts to $17.7 billion.

Wells Fargo gave CEO Charles Scharf a pay package worth $94.5 million after his yearslong effort to lead the bank back from a scandal involving fake bank accounts that landed Wells under federal supervision. And new scandals emerged along the way. The Federal Reserve finally let Wells leave the penalty box last year.

In his last year as CEO of the conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett received compensation worth $389,488 — down 4% from the year prior.

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg's compensation was valued at $25.1 million and almost all of it involved costs for the company to provide security for him and his family, as well as the use of corporate aircraft.

Jensen Huang of Nvidia, the most valuable publicly traded company, got a pay package valued at $36.3 million. He didn't make the AP survey because Nvidia filed its proxy after April 30.

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Editors Dorothea Degen and Paul Harloff, and reporters Bernard Condon, Matt Ott, Alex Veiga, Ken Sweet and Chris Rugaber contributed.

FILE - Wells Fargo & Company CEO and President Charles Scharf testifies at a Senate Banking Committee annual Wall Street oversight hearing, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - Jane Fraser, CEO, Citigroup, listens during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee oversight hearing to examine Wall Street firms on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is interviewed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

FILE - David Zaslav arrives at the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 2, 2017, file photo, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan speaks as President Donald Trump listens during an event to announce the company is moving its global headquarters to the United States, in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE - Elon Musk departs after a welcome ceremony with President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, Thursday, May 14, 2026, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)