What ‘America First’ Means for Global Health
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This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Adam Harris. And this week, we need to think about Ebola and the crumbling global health infrastructure. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is in the throes of one of the largest Ebola outbreaks in the history of the African continent. Nearly half of those who have contracted the virus have died. Since the outbreak began in May, the international community has been playing a game of catch-up. But perhaps it should have seen this coming. On the day President Trump returned to office in 2025, the administration issued a 90-day freeze on foreign aid. In February of that year, they eliminated 90% of the USAID foreign aid contracts before they finished dismantling USAID a few months later.
The shuttering sent shockwaves through the international aid community. The resources the U.S. was withdrawing weren't just good PR. They were critical to the public health of poorer nations. And now, as Ebola ravages the Congo, advocates say that this is exactly the sort of outbreak that money and coordination was intended to contain. How will this outbreak end? And could this level of catastrophe have been avoided? With me to discuss is my colleague, Hana Quiros, who's been covering the decimation of the U.S. 's global health aid and the current Ebola outbreak. Let's get to questions. Hana, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thanks for having me.
When we spoke at the office maybe about a month ago, there had been roughly 500 deaths from Ebola on the African continent to that point. Now there are roughly 1,500. Why has this breakout been so difficult to contain?
I think there are a couple of factors, but the biggest one is probably just that it was caught so late in its spread. There was a lot of disease transmission that occurred before an international response was mounted. Ebola was sort of, you know, this runaway train that was spreading through the DRC. And then, you know, it's in an active state. war zone, which complicates things. There's, you know, there's not really any testing in refugee camps. And it's also a gold mining town where the epicenter of the outbreaks where people just sort of come in and out. So it's a place where people, Ebola was spreading and spreading to a lot of different places before we started trying to contain it. And now it's just, you know, the response hasn't moved as fast as Ebola has through the country.
And so you're talking about the DRC, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Where else in the region is it? I know there were cases in Uganda. Has it spread beyond the DRC or is it still primarily located in the DRC?
So it's primarily located in the DRC and specifically in the eastern DRC. There's a health zone that's near South Sudan that has had its first cases of Ebola. Uganda has had a few cases, but the outbreak there has been declared over.
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