How Trump’s policy is leaving yet another nation dealing with deadly issue

For decades, Washington treated a major Ebola outbreak overseas as a problem that could eventually arrive on America’s doorstep. The answer was usually straightforward: send expertise, money and medical resources toward the virus before the virus had a chance to travel the other way.

Donald Trump’s administration has placed far more emphasis on keeping the door shut.

That shift has produced an extraordinary situation during Congo’s rapidly spreading Ebola epidemic. American medical workers exposed to the virus have been sent to other countries rather than brought home, while US volunteers heading into the outbreak now face the prospect of spending three weeks in quarantine before returning.

Doctors and aid organizations say those measures are making it harder to persuade desperately needed medical workers to go.

More than 4,000 people have already died, according to Reuters.

American doctors expected to come home

Patrick LaRochelle knew the drill when he learned in May that he had been exposed to Ebola.

The American doctor had been through something similar during an outbreak in 2018 and expected to be evacuated to the United States. At least three specialized US biocontainment centers were prepared to accept LaRochelle and fellow American doctor Peter Stafford, according to Reuters.

Washington had spent years investing in precisely that capability.

The White House chose another route.

A senior administration official told Reuters that officials issued a clear instruction after learning Americans had been exposed: they would not return to the US for treatment.

LaRochelle ultimately went to an isolation facility in Prague and never developed Ebola. Stafford, who contracted the disease, was treated in Germany and recovered.

Both praised the assistance they received from the US government and the quality of their medical care. Neither hid his disappointment at being kept away from home.

“It seems like so much is motivated by fear and by the optics, rather than a true understanding of medical risk,” LaRochelle told Reuters.

“It felt like decisions were patched together and reactive,” he added. “It makes me sad that we’re at that point, and there are times that I feel angry.”

Stafford had initially assumed that his eventual evacuation to Germany meant treatment at an American military hospital. Instead, he was taken to Berlin’s Charité hospital.

“I was disappointed and certainly sad that my home country was kind of rejecting us,” Stafford said. “I would have loved to get treated in the US.”

Washington builds a $70 million alternative

Trump’s administration instead established a 50-bed facility at an air base in Kenya where Americans can be quarantined after exposure.

The camp cost an estimated $70 million, according to Reuters.

Tents, converted shipping containers, air conditioning, Starlink internet, catering and more than 100 staff are available for returning Americans.

Patients are considerably harder to find.

Only seven people have stayed there, and the facility is currently empty.

Washington went further in July by imposing a “do-not-board” policy on US citizens who had been anywhere in Congo during the previous 21 days, preventing them from immediately boarding US-bound flights.

A State Department official involved in the response explained the administration’s priority bluntly: “first and foremost,” the government does not want Ebola cases entering the United States.

Public-health specialists do not dispute the importance of preventing imported infections. Their concern is that the policy may simultaneously make the outbreak abroad more difficult to stop.

American volunteers start disappearing

Samaritan’s Purse has seen the effect firsthand.

Americans previously accounted for roughly 80 percent of the organization’s staff at Ebola treatment centers in Congo, according to its president and CEO Franklin Graham.

That figure has fallen to around 20 percent.

“They have traveled around the world to fight Ebola and they should be treated as heroes,” Graham told Reuters.

Sending medical professionals to Congo has also become more than twice as expensive for the organization because of the quarantine requirements.

“The most effective way to respond to an Ebola outbreak is to safely bring as many highly trained medical professionals as you can to the epicenter, but these quarantine requirements are making that a real challenge,” Graham said.

Conditions at individual hospitals show how dramatically the numbers can change.

Davin Ambitapio Musungufu, director of Centre Medical Evangelique hospital in Bunia, said six American doctors had been working in Bunia and Nyankunde before the restrictions took effect.

Only one remained in Bunia afterward.

Congo is fighting a frighteningly fast outbreak

Staffing problems are arriving at an especially bad moment.

Congo is dealing with the Bundibugyo species of Ebola rather than the better-known Zaire species targeted by vaccines and treatments developed following the devastating 2014 West African epidemic.

CDC figures cited by Reuters show the scale of the acceleration.

After 139 days, Congo had recorded 8,224 confirmed cases. West Africa had recorded 1,766 cases at the equivalent stage of the 2014 outbreak, while Congo’s 2018 outbreak stood at 543.

More than 4,000 people have died in the current epidemic, making it the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak on record.

Violence against medical personnel, shortages of protective equipment and misinformation have all complicated containment efforts. Transmission has slowed in Ituri province, but the virus has spread rapidly elsewhere, including North Kivu.

Without a stronger response, the CDC has warned that the death toll could eventually surpass the 11,308 deaths recorded during the 2014 epidemic.

America First meets a virus without borders

Trump’s broader reshaping of US foreign and health policy has also changed the machinery behind the response.

His administration dismantled USAID and withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization, removing institutions that previously played major roles in moving supplies, organizing logistics and coordinating outbreak responses.

Salim Abdool Karim, a leading South African epidemiologist and chair of the Africa CDC emergency committee, described what USAID traditionally brought to an emergency.

“Traditionally, USAID is often given the task of logistics. They can find trucks, drivers, they can find warehouses,” Karim said.

“They will find the stuff and get it into the country, and get it out to where it’s needed.”

Organizations remaining on the ground have continued working, but Karim said money is limiting what they can accomplish.

“Their hands are tied because they don’t have big money,” he said.

Washington has not abandoned the response entirely.

The State Department says it has allocated $780 million, largely through NGOs running health facilities and purchasing supplies, making the US the largest outside national contributor. Another $50 million went to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, while the CDC says it has $113 million in emergency funding potentially available for work at home and abroad.

More than 120 CDC personnel are also working in Congo and Uganda on surveillance, laboratory testing, contact tracing, training and other tasks.

Kennedy’s role comes under scrutiny

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s involvement has attracted particular attention.

Two people familiar with his schedule told Reuters that Kennedy did not receive a formal briefing on the outbreak for weeks after it was detected in May.

The Health Department disputes the suggestion that he has been disengaged.

“This characterization of the US Ebola response overlooks the extensive work HHS and CDC are leading both at home and in Africa,” department spokeswoman Emily Hilliard said.

“Protecting Americans from importation and combating the outbreak at its source are both essential parts of our response.”

Hilliard said Kennedy has received regular briefings from government experts and remains deeply involved.

HHS also sent doses of an experimental treatment to the region in June for clinical trials.

Vaccine development remains another problem. CEPI has committed $100 million toward research on a Bundibugyo vaccine but says another $128 million is required for a large-scale trial in Congo.

WHO warns about making the job harder

The World Health Organization stopped short of declaring that US policy had worsened the epidemic, saying evidence would be needed to make such an assessment.

Its warning about the practical consequences was nevertheless clear.

Measures that discourage responders from deploying or remaining in outbreak zones risk slowing containment, according to the organization.

“The decisive work is in affected communities: finding cases early, following up contacts, providing safe care and protecting health workers,” WHO Africa regional emergency director Dr. Marie Roseline Belizaire said.

“International measures should support that work, including the timely movement of responders and supplies.”

Legal questions are hanging over Washington’s approach as well.

Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, argued that the policy breaks sharply with established practice.

“All past administrations have brought US citizens home for medical monitoring and treatment,” Gostin said. “US citizens have a right to return home.”

One nurse says she felt abandoned

Statistics about staffing shortages have a human counterpart.

An American nurse who worked with Samaritan’s Purse in Congo spent 21 days quarantined at the Kenya facility. She described the experience as mentally difficult and told Reuters that the requirement would influence whether she volunteers again.

Friends who otherwise might have joined the response have decided the restrictions make deployment impossible, she said.

Another American nurse encountered an even longer journey.

Florida lawyer Benjamin Martin said his daughter went to Congo in July before being stopped while attempting to fly home from Kinshasa. She spent 11 days quarantined in a hotel there and another 21 days in Europe.

Martin said the experience hit her particularly hard because the rejection came from her own government.

“When this happened, she literally told me: ‘I feel abandoned by my country.’”

History offers a markedly different approach.

Trump’s own health secretary during a 2019 Ebola outbreak, Alex Azar, traveled to Congo alongside senior American health officials as Washington deployed personnel and medical resources.

Barack Obama sent roughly 3,000 US troops to West Africa during the 2014 crisis, arguing that containing Ebola at its source was the best way to protect Americans at home.

Washington subsequently spent hundreds of millions of dollars building specialized facilities capable of safely treating Americans exposed to diseases such as Ebola.

Those US biocontainment units currently have no Ebola patients.

Neither does the $70 million quarantine facility waiting for them in Kenya.

This article is made and published by Nicolai H, who may have used AI in the preparation