By Trevor Hunnicutt and Julie Steenhuysen
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – The White House is seeking more than $1.4 billion in new funds from Congress to address the widening Ebola virus outbreak, including $800 million for humanitarian crisis response, according to a Trump administration official.
The move is part of a larger supplemental funding request made by the White House on Wednesday in a letter to Congress.
It includes $800 million for a quarantine center in Kenya for Americans exposed to the virus, supplies, treatment, contact tracing, a regional logistics network and infection-control practices, the official said.
U.S. officials are also seeking $500 million in global health security funds they say are needed to prevent the virus from spreading to the United States. That funding would include disease surveillance, laboratory capacity, cross-border coordination and potential partnerships with multilateral organizations and the private sector, the official said.
Another $90 million would go to diplomatic efforts, including evacuations and transportation of U.S. citizens with the virus to treatment facilities, according to the official.
Congressional aides said any such request could run into problems in Congress, where lawmakers, including some of President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans, are unhappy that his administration has been refusing to spend money allocated for foreign assistance, including medical care, around the world.
Washington has been criticized for its cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and African public health efforts, prior to the outbreak, which have hurt the response.
SERIOUS RESPONSE NEEDED
Congo’s Ebola outbreak is linked to the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus. It has infected more than 1,000 people and killed 267 — generating the largest number of confirmed cases within the first month of any episode of the disease, the World Health Organization said this week.
The two largest previous Ebola outbreaks occurred in West Africa — in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014 and 2016 — and in Congo in 2018.
“This is a very serious outbreak, and so a very serious response is needed now,” said Josh Michaud, a public health analyst with KFF, a health policy research group.
Michaud said $1.4 billion is probably in line with what is needed, adding that during the smaller DRC outbreak from 2018 to 2020, the United States spent about $266 million.
“The details matter here,” he said, noting that part of the funding is earmarked for the controversial quarantine center in Kenya for American citizens, which is aimed at preventing any cases of Ebola from reaching the United States.
The U.S. has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to the Ebola response so far. On June 18, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it would make $107 million in emergency funding available to strengthen its domestic and international response to the Ebola outbreak and warned it could be the worst outbreak yet.
The U.S. also has provided doses of an experimental antibody drug for use in clinical trials to fight the widening outbreak, a shift from its position of making the drug available only to Americans.
In France, a doctor who recently returned from a humanitarian mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo has tested positive for Ebola, marking the European country’s first confirmed case linked to the outbreak.
World Health Organization Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier on Wednesday told a press conference that the risk of the virus spreading further was low.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Caroline Humer and Matthew Lewis)
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