Three quarters of Americans support restoring US disease prevention aid to help contain the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda, according to new polling, despite the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to foreign aid last year.
The survey, conducted by Echelon Insights on behalf of The Rockefeller Foundation, found that 75 per cent of respondents backed restoring funding to tackle the outbreak. The support extended across the political spectrum, with just over half, at 52 per cent, identifying as supporters of US President Donald Trump, who made cutting billions from US aid funding a priority upon returning to the White House last year.
The findings come as public health officials warn the Ebola outbreak could become one of the largest ever recorded.
The poll of more than 2,000 US adults also found that 90 per cent supported funding overseas disease prevention programmes, while 72 per cent backed restoring some or all global health funding worldwide in light of the outbreak.
Experts have said that the outbreak has been exacerbated by abrupt cuts to US and Western foreign support that have shuttered vital services, such as disease prevention programmes.
In July last year, the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, officially closed, with most of its operations abolished and a small remainder absorbed into the US State Department. The cuts were enacted by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a temporary organisation set up by Trump shortly after his return to the White House and overseen by trillionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
DOGE was also closed earlier this month.
“I was as shocked as I was horrified,” Samantha Power, the last confirmed administrator of USAID, said of Trump’s decision in a recent interview with NPR. “I could not believe in the first instance that any human would suspend assistance, particularly life-saving assistance, without taking into account the human consequences or trying to do so in a manner that would allow people to make adjustments.”
As well as slashing health services, foreign aid cuts to critical infrastructure has led to increased violence that experts say has worsened the outbreak by decreased capacity in the region.
The death toll in the DRC has surpassed 500 since the outbreak was declared in mid-May, with more likely to have gone undetected. The number of confirmed cases has reached 1,561, amid continued community transmission.
Africa’s Centres for Disease Control has warned that ten other countries could be at risk, many with already fragile health systems, and modelling published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases predicted a spread to South Sudan within weeks.
The DRC is one of the largest and deadliest humanitarian crises in the world, with 1 million seeking refuge abroad and 21 million urgently in need of aid, including medical assistance and supplies.
This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
