JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The World Health Organization has declared an international public health emergency. An outbreak of Ebola centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo has likely killed more than 80 people. More than 300 other people have gotten sick, including at least one American. The size of the new outbreak raises questions about whether there were delays in detection. Here with the latest is NPR's global health correspondent Jonathan Lambert. Hi there.
JONATHAN LAMBERT, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So just bring us up to speed if you can. Why is the WHO concerned about this outbreak?
LAMBERT: For a number of reasons. For one, Ebola is a really serious disease. The virus kills about half the people it infects, so health officials are generally really on the lookout for it. And usually when an outbreak gets announced, it's just a handful of cases. Like, last year, the DRC had an outbreak that was declared after just 28 cases. Eventually, 45 people died during that outbreak. This one is already much bigger. I asked Jeremy Konyndyk about this. He was involved in Ebola response when he worked at the United States Agency for International Development during the Obama administration.
JEREMY KONYNDYK: I'm very, very worried. If I compare this to past outbreaks, this one has more momentum at point - at time of detection than the huge West Africa outbreak in 2014 did.
LAMBERT: And more than 11,000 people died during that outbreak.
SUMMERS: I mean, there have been so many cases. Why are we just finding out about this outbreak now?
LAMBERT: There are a few reasons. One may be the kind of Ebola that's spreading. It's a rare strain called Bundibugyo, and standard field tests often miss it. Samples had to be sent to larger labs, and in a big country like DRC, that can take time. Now, historically, the U.S. has played a pretty significant role in supporting this kind of surveillance. That's especially true in DRC because it's kind of a hot spot for infectious disease outbreaks.
SUMMERS: What did that support look like during past outbreaks?
LAMBERT: it took a lot of different forms. Some of them were formal. For instance, USAID played - USAID staff placed across the country played a key role in flagging outbreaks of unidentified diseases, and CDC staff in DRC and in the U.S. lended their expertise - things like transporting samples to labs and testing them. But the Trump administration dismantled USAID last year, and CDC has experienced ongoing challenges from funding cuts. Konyndyk says that could have hampered the response and allowed the virus to spread.
KONYNDYK: You know, we are just in a much, much weaker position now to respond to a challenging Ebola outbreak like this one than we would have been even 18 to 24 months ago.
SUMMERS: What does the Trump administration have to say about that?
LAMBERT: In a statement, the State Department said that it was false to claim that USAID reform has negatively affected their ability to respond to Ebola. And on a press call Sunday, I asked CDC about this. Satish Pillai, the Ebola response manager, didn't answer my question. He did say, though, that CDC was only notified of the first case the day before the outbreak was announced. Usually, they'd get more of a heads-up, but he claimed difficult conditions on the ground delayed the process.
SUMMERS: OK, so what are the conditions that might have delayed detection of the outbreak?
LAMBERT: The cases are in a remote mining area where there's a lot of ongoing conflict. But aid cuts may play into this too. In these conflict areas, humanitarian aid workers are kind of an informal surveillance network. They can often get where government workers can't, and they might hear about some strange outbreak and flag it to officials. In DRC, U.S. funding for that kind of humanitarian aid has dropped by nearly 80% during the Trump administration, and that could have made detection harder.
SUMMERS: So the delayed detection may be because of the rare strain or may be because of funding cuts, but now that this outbreak is here, how bad could things get?
LAMBERT: For the region, it could get pretty bad. Because this is such a rare strain, there aren't approved vaccines or treatments. But the risk outside the region to the U.S., for instance, is low. Ebola doesn't spread like an airborne disease like COVID, so it's likely not a pandemic risk.
SUMMERS: Good to know. NPR's Jonathan Lambert, thanks so much.
LAMBERT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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