The U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday that it will nearly double its direct financial support for the Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by committing an additional $242 million to the response effort. Spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters the new funding is intended to underwrite up to six months of on-the-ground activity and raises the total U.S. assistance to $512 million.
U.S. officials and aid organizations have described the outbreak as the second-largest Ebola epidemic in history and as unusually fast-spreading. Contributing factors cited by aid personnel include delayed detection of cases, gaps in surveillance systems, ongoing armed conflict in eastern Congo and the lack of vaccines and treatments for the particular strain currently circulating.
French medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, issued a statement on Wednesday characterizing the situation in eastern Congo as "more critical than ever." MSF highlighted that in the 11 weeks since this outbreak was declared, the number of deaths recorded is more than five times higher than the number recorded during the same 11-week period of the 2014-2016 West Africa epidemic, the earlier outbreak that ultimately killed over 11,000 people.
Official government tallies show that, as of Tuesday, Congo had confirmed 3,874 cases and 1,751 deaths. The World Health Organization has cautioned that the real magnitude of the outbreak could be two to four times larger than those counts indicate because of weaknesses in case detection and contact tracing systems.
The United States has been the largest single contributor to the international response so far, the State Department said. U.S. funding has supported more than 180 health facilities in affected areas and has enabled the procurement and distribution of nearly 300 tons of critical supplies to responders on the ground.
Addressing the outlook for the response, Pigott said: "While we recognize that the road ahead is long and challenging, the United States’ support has unquestionably stopped this outbreak from being worse." He framed the additional funds as part of sustained U.S. engagement to help contain transmission and support health services in the affected regions.
International aid officials have also criticized actions taken before the outbreak by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, including cuts to foreign aid and organizational changes such as the transfer of U.S. foreign assistance activities into the State Department and the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Critics say those moves left first responders less prepared to detect and respond when the crisis emerged.
Pigott rejected the contention that those changes hampered the Ebola response, calling the claim false and arguing that consolidating foreign assistance under the State Department had made U.S. aid efforts more efficient.
The additional U.S. commitment is intended to sustain response activities for up to half a year as health authorities and international partners work to improve surveillance, expand treatment capacity and deliver supplies where they are needed. Given the World Health Organization's assessment that official counts may substantially understate the outbreak's true size, aid agencies face ongoing challenges identifying all cases and tracing contacts in conflict-affected and hard-to-reach areas.
Context note: The information on confirmed case and death counts, assessments of potential underreporting, the quoted statement by MSF about relative deaths compared to the 2014-2016 West Africa epidemic, and the U.S. funding totals and program impacts are taken from official and aid organization statements provided to reporters.