Congo's Ebola death toll has passed 3,000 in the fastest-growing outbreak in the country's history. The global health infrastructure built to prevent exactly this was dismantled by U.S. funding cuts earlier this year — and the two facts belong in the same sentence.
Five years after withdrawal, the U.S. has cut the humanitarian funding that was keeping Afghan mothers and children alive — and the administration knew exactly what would happen when it did.
The WHO is tracking 600 Ebola cases and 139 deaths, with no vaccine deployable for nine months. The global health infrastructure designed to prevent exactly this scenario was dismantled by U.S. foreign aid cuts earlier this year.
Former USAID official Nicholas Enrich watched the Trump administration and DOGE dismantle two decades of global health infrastructure. His eyewitness account documents not waste elimination, but the deliberate destruction of systems — from PEPFAR supply chains to disease surveillance networks — whos