The current Ebola outbreak in parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda is forcing local healthcare providers to prove how well they can handle disease surveillance and emergency medicine.
The outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo virus, has no approved vaccine and no widely proven treatment. The response to this most recent virus spread also shows the role the Trump administration believes the United States should play in global health cases –– particularly those that originate in non-European nations.
As of June 13, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 782 confirmed cases and 178 confirmed deaths in the DRC. As of June 14, Uganda had 19 confirmed cases and two confirmed deaths. In its Ebola outbreak summary, the CDC noted that:
- “CDC is working with international partners on this evolving situation.
- “CDC has taken proactive measures to prevent Ebola from entering the United States.
- “To date, no cases of Ebola disease have been confirmed in the United States because of this outbreak.”
The outbreak is spreading in areas of Africa that already have to deal with armed conflict and weakened healthcare systems; the lack of on-the-ground U.S. support is making containment more difficult.
“The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, I think, is a clear example of how devastating and horrific and selfish Trump’s America First agenda has been and how it has direct impacts on the health and safety of communities abroad, which actually know no borders,” said former U.S. Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice Desirée Cormier Smith.
Cormier Smith, co-founder and co-president of the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, told the Amsterdam News that the Ebola outbreak cannot be separated from the Trump administration’s dismantling of support for health agencies.
“One thing that COVID taught us is that an epidemic or a pandemic overseas does not respect national borders,” she said. “By cutting USAID, by removing the United States from the World Health Organization, by conducting mass layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services and putting an unqualified person to lead those agencies in Robert Kennedy, the Trump administration is putting Americans at risk.”
Trump’s administration has defended its Ebola response: CDC officials have said the risk to the U.S. public remains low, no U.S. cases have been confirmed, and travel screening and entry restrictions have been enacted to keep travelers from affected countries from entering the U.S. However, critics say that even before the outbreak, the loss of disease surveillance networks, laboratory support, trained community health workers, local partners, and emergency-response teams that once helped identify and contain Ebola has made it more difficult to stop this outbreak.
The most notable response by the Trump administration to the outbreak has been its effort to establish a quarantine and treatment site for U.S. citizens in another country: Kenya. The site would monitor U.S. citizens who have had high-risk exposure to Ebola. Although Kenyans have protested and Kenya’s High Court has suspended the facility’s opening, the Kenyan government appears willing to allow it to go forward.
Mel Foote, president of the Constituency for Africa, said the facility raises questions about whose lives should be protected and whose communities are going to be asked to face danger.
“What the U.S. is trying to do, clearly, is to back these countries into a hole,” Foote said. After one U.S. doctor was treated in Germany, the creation of a quarantine site in Kenya sent a message. “Why don’t they bring them back to the United States? You know, we can put them somewhere else, but we can’t put them in the United States? In other words, our lives in the United States matter more than their lives in Africa, right?”
Foote said Kenyans he has spoken with are skeptical of their government’s willingness to go along with the U.S. request, especially when many young Kenyans have been demanding jobs, infrastructure, education, and accountability from their own leaders. He said the current dispute fits a longer pattern of foreign powers relying on African cooperation while failing to invest equally in African lives.
“I think the U.S. doesn’t care anything about the people of Kenya; they don’’t care about Africa; they don’t care about us. Nothing has changed there,” Foote said.
How the U.S. responded before
During the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the Obama administration put together billions in emergency funding, and U.S. agencies worked with ministries of health, the World Health Organization (WHO), and international partners. That global response to Ebola started out slowly — but by the end, it helped build monitoring systems for contact tracing and emergency operations.
The Bundibugyo virus outbreak was declared in May after health authorities found severe illnesses among health workers in northeastern DRC. Early testing did not immediately confirm Ebola, and officials have said the virus, which appears to have a 21-day incubation period, was probably spreading undetected before the outbreak was recognized.
“The epicenter right now is in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which is an active conflict zone,” Cormier Smith said. “There is insecurity there; there are militias actively fighting there, so it’s really hard for not only first responders to get there, but it’s also hard for the people who live there to actually get treatment from hospitals.”
The WHO and Africa CDC have launched a $518 million response and preparedness plan to deal with the Ebola outbreak. At press time, Africa CDC had not provided a statement to the Amsterdam News in response to questions about the continental response, the role the African diaspora can play in supporting response efforts, fundraising channels, or vaccine development.
