The White House is seeking more than $1.4bn (R23.17bn) in new funds from the US Congress to address the widening Ebola virus outbreak, including $800m (R13.24bn) for humanitarian crisis response, according to an official in President Donald Trump’s administration.
The move is part of a larger supplemental funding request made by the White House on Wednesday in a letter to Congress.
It includes $800m for a quarantine centre in Kenya for Americans exposed to the virus, supplies, treatment, contact tracing, a regional logistics network and infection-control practices, the official said.
US officials are also seeking $500m (R8.27bn) in global health security funds they said are needed to prevent the virus from spreading to the US. The official said that funding would include:
- disease surveillance;
- laboratory capacity;
- cross-border co-ordination; and
- potential partnerships with multilateral organisations and the private sector.
Another $90m (R1.49bn) would go to diplomatic efforts, including evacuations and transportation of US citizens with the virus to treatment facilities, according to the official.
This is a very serious outbreak, so a very serious response is needed now ... The details matter here
— Josh Michaud, KFF public health analyst
Congressional aides said any such request could run into problems in Congress, where lawmakers, including some of Trump’s fellow Republicans, are unhappy that his administration has been refusing to spend money allocated for foreign assistance, including medical care, around the world.
Washington has been criticised for its cuts to the US Agency for International Development and African public health efforts, before the outbreak, which have hurt the response.
Serious response needed
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is linked to the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus. It has infected more than 1,000 people and killed 267, generating the largest number of confirmed cases within the first month of any episode of the disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said this week.
The two largest previous Ebola outbreaks occurred in West Africa in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014 and 2016 and in the DRC in 2018.
“This is a very serious outbreak, so a very serious response is needed,” said Josh Michaud, a public health analyst with KFF, a health policy research group.
Michaud said $1.4bn is probably in line with what is needed, adding during the smaller DRC outbreak from 2018 to 2020, the US spent about $266m.
“The details matter here,” he said, noting part of the funding is earmarked for the controversial quarantine centre in Kenya for American citizens, which is aimed at preventing Ebola cases from reaching the US.
The US has pledged hundreds of millions to the Ebola response so far. On June 18, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it would make $107m in emergency funding available to strengthen its domestic and international response to the Ebola outbreak and warned it could be the worst outbreak yet.
The US also has provided doses of an experimental antibody drug for use in clinical trials to fight the widening outbreak, a shift from its position of making the drug available only to Americans.
In France, a doctor who recently returned from a humanitarian mission in the DRC has tested positive for Ebola, marking the European country’s first confirmed case linked to the outbreak.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier on Wednesday told a press conference the risk of the virus spreading further was low.
Reuters
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