{"id":576961,"date":"2026-07-31T10:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T10:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/576961\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T10:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T10:23:08","slug":"state-department-pressed-to-increase-aid-for-women-impacted-by-ebola-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/576961\/","title":{"rendered":"State Department pressed to increase aid for women impacted by Ebola outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A bipartisan pair of senators is urging Secretary of State Marco Rubio to unlock family planning funding and supplies for women caught in the Ebola outbreak sweeping the Democratic Republic of the Congo\u2019s east, warning that the Trump administration\u2019s freeze on such aid is deepening a maternal health crisis. <\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.sanity.io\/files\/ifn0l6bs\/production\/6d5981995b4c6fe2c95c7ce77cef921878404f25.pdf\" class=\"_linkEmbed_1pt7l_31\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">letter<\/a> shared first with Semafor, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asked Rubio to use $608 million in international family planning funds from the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill and release $1.7 million worth of already-purchased contraceptive products which, the senators said, would otherwise be destroyed. <\/p>\n<p>They also pressed for a \u201chumanitarian exemption\u201d allowing US support for the UN Population Fund, or UNFPA, so it can resume sexual and reproductive health programming in the affected region. President Donald Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/presidential-actions\/2026\/01\/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-international-organizations-conventions-and-treaties-that-are-contrary-to-the-interests-of-the-united-states\/\" class=\"_linkEmbed_1pt7l_31\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">withdrew<\/a> from the organization earlier this year. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cProviding sexual and reproductive health support to women is not a parallel track alongside the Ebola response: It is the Ebola response for the 642,000 women of reproductive age \u2014 including an estimated 37,820 pregnant women \u2014 in the affected areas,\u201d the senators wrote.<\/p>\n<p>They noted that Ebola infection during pregnancy carries a nearly 100% fetal loss rate and a severe maternal hemorrhage risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bipartisan pair of senators is urging Secretary of State Marco Rubio to unlock family planning funding and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60],"class_list":["post-576961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}