The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contributed to 600,000 “preventable deaths,” Democrats in the U.S. Congress stated in a report released on Thursday.
House Oversight Democrats said the closure of USAID had “left the world faltering” in its response to the latest Ebola outbreak, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) this week confirmed was continuing to spread “at a rapid pace.”
The report also criticised South African-born Elon Musk, who, as a White House aide, infamously said he would feed USAID “into the wood chipper.”
“By shuttering USAID, Donald Trump is causing hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, harming our national security, and now we are facing a deadly, rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak he and Musk helped cause. Documenting the harm they caused is the first step to accountability,” the report said.
The report stated that the rapid spread of the virus “is directly linked to a failure to test, track, isolate and treat sick patients,” which it said had previously been possible in a war-torn, economically volatile region due to USAID and humanitarian assistance programmes that are no longer operational.
The deadly Ebola outbreak in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the country’s 17th since 1976 and has so far killed more than 240 people.
Known as the Bundibugyo virus, a rare strain of the Ebola species, it was first identified in Uganda in 2007.
Last month, the WHO declared the Bundibugyo Ebola strain a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). It appears to have originated in the DRC’s Ituri Province, but has now spread to North Kivu and South Kivu provinces. Cross-border cases have also been confirmed, some of which have reached Kampala, the capital of Uganda.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has identified 1,077 suspected cases and 246 deaths so far. There is no licensed vaccine or specific treatment for the Bundibugyo virus.
As the virus spreads, WHO officials and other NGOs concede that they are “behind the curve” because infections remained undetected for weeks or months. Detection and surveillance systems were considerably compromised by recent U.S. aid cuts.
The situation in eastern DRC has been exacerbated by the conflict between government forces and rebel groups, which has displaced millions of people. The conflict has shut clinics, disrupted medical supplies, and hampered rapid response teams and safe treatment centres. An estimated 26 million people in the region face hunger.
The virus vector is believed to be the bat population in DRC’s rainforests. Symptoms include fever, body pain, weakness, vomiting and internal bleeding. Once infected, patients tend to deteriorate rapidly. The disease’s incubation period is around 21 days. Local burial practices involving touching the body of the deceased have also been identified as a factor in the rapid spread of the virus.
The epicentre of the outbreak has been identified as Mongbwalu, a town north-west of the provincial capital Bunia. Mongbwalu is a gold mining area surrounded by rebel-held territory in Ituri Province. Experts warn that the disease can easily be spread by a transient population of miners who flock to the area and move freely across provincial and national borders.
Many locals do not believe the Ebola virus is real. Adding to the confusion is the fact that those infected display symptoms similar to other diseases such as malaria.
