Health workers and humanitarian groups are rushing to contain an Ebola outbreak spreading through eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A former UK government minister has warned that the crisis should serve as a wake-up call over the dangers of cutting British and American aid.
Congo Ebola crisis spreads to Uganda
More than 100 people died in DRC, and cases of the Congo Ebola crisis have spread to neighbouring Uganda. It also spread to Rwanda and South Sudan, which are now on high alert.
An American doctor is among the latest confirmed cases, testing positive in Bunia, the capital of DRC’s Ituri province. According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention head Jean Kaseya, Ituri lies at the epicentre of the current outbreak.
Former UK Africa minister Rory Stewart, who served during the last major Ebola outbreak in 2018, described the connection as very strong.
“Pandemic preparedness, in other words, dealing with an Ebola outbreak or even a new version of a Covid outbreak requires lots of people on the ground in places like DRC or Uganda who CAN detect cases, respond to them, quarantine and prepare responses,” Stewart said.
Stewart called the outbreak the canary in the coal mine for future problems.
Trump-era USAID slash global health budgets by billions
Donald Trump has expressed concern about the outbreak. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that a small number of Americans who are directly affected are withdrawing from the area.
Jean Pierre Badombo, the former mayor of Mongbwalu, a mining town in Ituri at the outbreak’s epicentre, told Reuters that people began falling ill in April after a large open-casket funeral procession.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
US foreign assistance spending fell by nearly 57 per cent after the Trump administration dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This follows the president’s return to the White House for a second term last year.
USAID had previously financed laboratory networks, disease surveillance programmes, and emergency response capacity across the continent.
Earlier this month, the administration began plans to divert a further $2 billion in global health funding. This is to cover the costs of shutting down USAID operations overseas.
Recently, the European Union has airlifted 65 tonnes of critical humanitarian aid to Congo as fighting intensifies in the region.