One of the largest Ebola outbreaks in history shows no signs of slowing — and the Trump administration barred US health experts who want to help at the outbreak’s epicenter in the Democratic Republic of Congo from traveling there.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials were working in Beni, the city that’s ground zero for the outbreak in eastern DRC, for a few days in late August and early September. Experts say that’s an unusually short period of time for infectious disease responses; CDC deployments usually last at least four weeks, and many run for several months.
But then the White House’s National Security Council (NSC) coordinated a government review of the security risks, involving representatives from multiple government agencies and departments. The review determined that CDC officials could not return to areas where militant attacks threaten security, including Beni. Stat News first reported on October 14 that the US had pulled out of the area.
“It’s unprecedented that the CDC expertise is not at the very center of the response because that has been the pattern for the other outbreaks,” Stephen Morrison, a global health expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, told Vox. “We have some people on CDC staff who are veterans of almost two dozen outbreaks.”
