Evenings The United States, which is rapidly reducing foreign aid worldwide, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an anonymous disease with symptoms such as Ebola has destroyed several villages. The disease has killed more than 60 people and more than 1,000 people, and at the same time as the Ebola outbreak in neighboring Uganda, as well as increased political violence in the DRC.
Experts say the elimination of the efficiency of the State Department of Elon Mossak from the US International Development Agency (USAID) has strengthened the response to the anonymous disease and delayed further investigations and efforts to prevent the spread of additional diseases.
The medical staff has been terminated along the Uganda -DRC border. The soldiers are everywhere. The laboratory made to deal with zona diseases with the US budget is empty. “
Nidi Boroui, a former deputy director of World Health Assistant in USAID during the Joe Biden government, who was formerly preparing the disease and trying to respond, says reducing aid has caused a gap in response to the ground. “We don’t have a presence in the country,” he says. USAID previously provided key infrastructure and support for disease monitoring and prevention. This has been working with the US Disease Control and Prevention Centers simultaneously, Bori says. “After identifying a pathogen, USAID was able to historically identify rapid methods to reduce expansion.” The Donald Trump administration has suddenly created USAID, creating a vacuum that other agencies are trying to complete.
The US State Department did not respond to comment requests. “The CDC is closely monitoring the situation and is involved with DRC authorities about what the agency can offer,” says Melissa Dibel, a spokesman for the Disease Centers.
While the disease in the DRC is still officially unknown, there are some contradictory theories about the cause. The World Health Organization now thinks that the anonymous disease can actually be a huge accident, not a virus, with contaminated water as a potential source. Or if it is a virus, it may not be a novel at all. Last year in DRC, the prevalence of an unknown disease was discovered as respiratory infections associated with malaria. Local health officials, including experts from African Disease Control and Prevention Center, assume that this may happen again.
In 2024, the US Congress allocated $ 795 million for malaria control, most of which was to serve the southern Saharan Africa, attracting much of the global malaria infections. However, the rapid directing stronghold of the vast majority made this help. “Stopping US programs that prevent and treat malaria will lead to the prevalence and increase in mortality,” said Martin Edlovand, another non -profit malaria manager. “The new modeling shows that one year of disorder leads to nearly 15 million extra malaria cases and 107,000 extra deaths.”
