As an Ebola outbreak rages in central and East Africa, public health workers say that the response has been stymied by the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid and global health organizations.
“We are no longer able to get some supplies,” Amadou Bocoum, Democratic Republic of Congo country director for the anti-poverty nonprofit CARE, tells WIRED. “Because of that, we are not able to react immediately.”
Bocoum says that basic medical equipment like masks and hand sanitizers, as well as components necessary for testing, are in short supply due to funding cuts.
WIRED spoke to more than half a dozen global health experts who described how the Trump administration’s move to shutter the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), amid other funding cuts, has created a strained, increasingly fragmented disease prevention and response system in the lead up to this Ebola outbreak, one in which a severely reduced workforce already struggles with burnout.
“We are so far behind in this outbreak,” says a current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employee with outbreak experience. “This is a perfect storm.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak an emergency “of international concern” on May 16. There is no vaccine or treatment for this strain of Ebola, known as Bundibugyo. There were over 530 confirmed cases and 134 deaths as of May 19, and both numbers are rising quickly. According to the CDC, 25 to 50 percent of people who contract the strain will die from it.
“People really need to understand that if this is not handled carefully, it will get wild very easily,” says Bocoum. “It’s really key that we need to react fast to contain it.”
Source: Wired
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