How aid cuts are hampering the front-line response to the Ebola crisis
By Henry Larson, Adrian Florido, Sarah Robbins
Sunday, May 31, 2026 • 5:11 PM EDT
Heard on All Things Considered
A large Ebola outbreak in central Africa is spreading, and misinformation about the virus is making matters worse.
Rumors on social media claim that Ebola is not real or that healthcare workers are out to profit for themselves.
More than 1,000 suspected and confirmed cases have been recorded, with at least 223 deaths suspected of being caused by Ebola, according to the World Health Organization. Health workers say that's likely a major undercount.
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The epicenter of the outbreak is in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Uganda, which borders the Democratic Republic of Congo, has so far been spared the worst of the outbreak. On May 27, the country closed its official border crossings with Congo.
"We still have a number of porous border points … whereby people continue to cross over," said Leonard Musinguzi. He's a community and surveillance officer for the International Rescue Committee in Uganda.
Musinguzi's job is to track likely cases of Ebola, quarantine refugees, train healthcare workers and prepare his community to battle the disease.
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That's an uphill battle, especially because wrong information about Ebola can spread even faster than a virus.
One of the ways Musinguzi tries to combat that misinformation is public health messaging. His organization distributes radio spots, posters and information on hospital televisions meant to educate about the disease.
However, governments like the United States have cut back their support for programs like the International Rescue Committee's. That means Musinguzi has less money for the projects he wants to do.
Before, he might have paid to place educational messages during five radio talk shows. Now, he said, "because of this reduced funding, you only have one."
In a statement to NPR, the State Department said recent federal funding changes did not have any significant effect on U.S. funding levels for global health programs or health security programs in the eastern Congo.
Spokesman Tommy Pigott said, "The United States responded within 24 hours of the first confirmed case, mobilizing a wide range of medical, humanitarian, operational, and consular resources to rapidly respond to the Ebola outbreak."
NPR's Adrian Florido spoke with aid workers and a former U.S. Agency for International Development employee to learn more about the pressures facing the global health system and how federal government cuts may have contributed.
Listen to the full story by clicking the blue play button above.
Transcript
ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
One of the largest Ebola outbreaks in history is spreading in Central Africa. The World Health Organization's tally of confirmed and suspected cases is around 1,000, and health workers say that's likely a major undercount. The epicenter of the outbreak is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC.
ROBERT PETRON MESSE: What we are witnessing in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo today, it's not simply an Ebola outbreak in isolation. It is an epidemic unfolding within an already fragile humanitarian context.
FLORIDO: That's (ph) Robert Petron Messe. He works for the international nonprofit Oxfam in the DRC, and he sent us a voice memo describing why the epidemic is so hard to control. Not only is there no vaccine for this strain of the virus, which spreads through bodily fluids, but in the towns where it's running rampant, many people aren't able to quarantine.
MESSE: Families are frequently living in small, shared spaces where isolation is simply not possible.
FLORIDO: In the DRC, several crises are coalescing - prolonged economic hardship, a history of conflict and now this outbreak. While the northeast region of the DRC is seeing the worst of it so far, Ebola has begun to make its way across the nearby border into Uganda where workers and officials are racing to contain the spread. Uganda closed its official border crossings with Congo just a few days ago. Even so...
LEONARD MUSINGUZI: We still have a number of borders, border points whereby people continue to cross over. So that is one of the challenges we are having.
FLORIDO: Leonard Musinguzi (ph) is a community and surveillance officer for the International Rescue Committee in Kiryandongo (ph), Uganda, near the border with the DRC.
MUSINGUZI: Kiryandongo was categorized as a very high-risk district.
FLORIDO: Musinguzi's job is to track likely cases of Ebola, quarantine people showing possible symptoms, and prepare his community in case the disease begins to spread beyond the few confirmed cases so far. We reached Musinguzi at a clinic where he's working. I asked him about one big challenge.
We've been hearing in communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo that have been heavily affected by Ebola there's a lot of mistrust of health authorities, of health officials, of clinic workers. Some people don't believe that Ebola is actually what's causing people to get sick. I'm wondering if you are hearing similar concerns or mistrusts from people where you are.
MUSINGUZI: There is a lot of misinformation and disinformation. However, with these actions that we are doing, a lot of behavior change is happening.
FLORIDO: Musinguzi relies heavily on public health messaging using radio and TV.
MUSINGUZI: We do radio spot messages on Ebola in the different languages. We have printed out posters talking about how we can identify symptoms of Ebola.
FLORIDO: Musinguzi says these education campaigns are critical, but he says recent cuts in international foreign aid have meant not enough money to get public health information on the air.
MUSINGUZI: We have a number of gaps due to the funding cuts. If, let me say, you were to have five radio talk shows on radio educating people on how they can identify cases, you find because of reduced funding, you only have one.
FLORIDO: To understand the impact of these cuts, we reached out to Nicholas Enrich. He worked on global health policy for the United States Agency for International Development, known as USAID, coordinating the U.S. federal response to international public health threats. He was acting assistant administrator for global health in the first months of President Trump's second term as the agency was being dismantled, and he was placed on administrative leave for making details about that effort public. I first asked him about the severity of this Ebola outbreak.
NICHOLAS ENRICH: Yeah, I think that this is one of the most serious Ebola outbreaks that the world has ever seen, honestly. And part of that is because of how late we got notification and declaration of the outbreak, and part of it has to do with the strain of the virus, as well as the location of it.
FLORIDO: How important a role has the U.S. usually played in fighting an outbreak like this? You know, what does the U.S. role historically look like on the ground, specifically?
ENRICH: The U.S. has played a central role in coordinating with the host governments of an Ebola outbreak. USAID led the response often in coordination with local partners that, you know, work for community-based organizations and religious groups that were trusted in the communities.
FLORIDO: Is any of that happening now, from what you can see?
ENRICH: No. You know, I think what we've really lost in this particular outbreak is the U.S. government's rapid response. And USAID had a playbook for responding rapidly, and that's the part of this that has been systematically dismantled. We're seeing the State Department responding much more slowly, kind of having to reinvent the wheel. And these - this is a time when decisions need to be made in hours, not the days and weeks that we're seeing from the State Department. This lack of time is actually costing lives.
FLORIDO: The State Department has said that it is sending $23 million to Central Africa to help contain the outbreak and also that the U.S. is going to fund 50 clinics. Is that not a big deal?
ENRICH: No, I think that that is a big deal, and they should continue to do that. However, I think that's - it's very much future-looking, and that's not exactly what we're looking for in terms of an immediate response. I mean, I think that we're going to need those, unfortunately, as this outbreak continues, but the problem is that these are not the immediate response that is needed and that USAID had been famous for.
FLORIDO: What lessons should the US be learning about the importance of preparedness for future global health emergencies?
ENRICH: Yeah, I think that that's exactly the lesson, is that preparedness is key and that it's much more effective to be prepared to prevent outbreaks in advance than to respond to them. And I think what we're seeing with Ebola is actually just unfortunately the tip of the iceberg of the damage that has been done to the global early warning system that USAID and its partners developed to help countries to be able to detect and respond to potential outbreaks before they developed into international crises like this one.
FLORIDO: We've been speaking with Nicholas Enrich. He worked in the Bureau of Global Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development until last year and is the author of "Into The Wood Chipper," a book about the dismantling of USAID. Nicholas Enrich, thanks for joining us.
ENRICH: Thanks so much for having me.
FLORIDO: We asked the State Department to respond to Enrich's claims. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told us that it's false to claim that the USAID reform has negatively impacted the U.S.'s ability to respond to Ebola. He said the U.S. mobilized within 24 hours of the first confirmed case and that the administration's highest priority remains, quote, "protecting the health and security of the American people by working to prevent this outbreak from reaching our shores," unquote.
Meanwhile, Robert Petron Messe, the aid worker in the DRC, told us reductions in international funding and coordination have weakened essential services his organization can provide, like quarantining, at a critical time in this deadly Ebola outbreak.
MESSE: What is most urgently required is rapid and flexible funding as the situation evolves. With the right level of international support, the trajectory can still be reversed.