That partnership is now gone. And we are watching, in real time, what its absence costs.<\/p>\n
Since mid-May, an Ebola outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain \u2014 one for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment<\/a> \u2014 has torn through the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The WHO declared it a public health emergency of international concern<\/a>. Within weeks, it had already become, by some counts, the third-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded<\/a>, with cases slipping across the border into Uganda. The WHO’s director-general put it plainly: responders are \u201cplaying catch-up<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n In an outbreak, catch-up is a damning word. It means the virus had a head start. It means somewhere, early on, the system that was supposed to catch it, didn’t.<\/p>\n The aid workers on the ground with whom I\u2019ve spoken point to a clear reason. U.S. funding cutbacks and layoffs \u2014 a four-pronged retreat that withdrew American money from the WHO, dissolved USAID, trimmed the CDC and pared back direct health aid to the countries now at the center of the epidemic \u2014 hampered the world’s ability<\/a> to respond. Tom Frieden, who ran the CDC during the catastrophic 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, described the combined effect as a “1-2-3 punch<\/a>\u201d to global health architecture. When the administration gutted USAID<\/a> and walked away<\/a> from the WHO last year, the Trump administration\u2019s argument was tidy: This was, in part, a fiscal choice<\/a>. America first<\/a>: Stop subsidizing the rest of the world’s health and bring the money home. It was a clean line, and clean lines sell.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the thing: It wasn\u2019t a clean break. The U.S. is now working with the same partners again.<\/p>\n Take, for example, Gavi, the vaccine alliance<\/a> that helps poorer countries buy and deliver immunizations \u2014 and maintains emergency stockpiles for diseases like Ebola and cholera. Last year, the administration canceled a $1 billion grant<\/a> it had pledged to Gavi, with the health secretary accusing the organization of neglecting vaccine safety<\/a> and the State Department calling the funding inconsistent with our national interest. The message was that Gavi wasn’t worth American dollars. Then, this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told senators the United States would \u201creengage<\/a>\u201d \u2014 that the State Department was moving to release the money it had withheld.<\/p>\n Don’t get me wrong. I am glad the money is flowing again. I have never once wished for less American funding in global health.<\/p>\n My objection is narrower, and harder to dodge: if these partners are worth engaging now \u2014 on any terms \u2014 they were worth funding then. The return is the confession. Coming back, even with strings attached, admits the value was always there. The cuts were premature, and we may all pay for them.<\/p>\n The reversal on funding for Gavi is just one example. Reinstating partial funding to PEPFAR<\/a> and to fight Ebola<\/a> in the DRC are two more. The pattern repeats \u2014 pull the critical funding, declare a victory for the taxpayer, then quietly come back when the consequences arrive at your own front door. Except the consequences of public health don’t wait politely for the U-turn. A surveillance officer laid off in 2025 is not putting his life on hold in the hopes of being rehired in\u00a0 2026. The labs that shut down can\u2019t reopen anytime soon. Abandon the commitment and you trade away your early warning system. You’ll hear about the next outbreak when everyone else does \u2014 too late to shape the response.<\/p>\n The Trump administration rolled out the America First Global Health Strategy<\/a> late last year to replace the architecture it had just dismantled. Its deepest flaw, the thing that worries me most, is that it has quietly converted global health from a collective, multilateral effort into a patchwork of bilateral deals \u2014 one country, one memorandum of understanding, one negotiated set of terms at a time. It treats global health as a transaction, not what it is: a shared defense that protects America by protecting everyone else.<\/p>\n Worse, some of those deals come with strings. The terms have been described as \u201coverwhelmingly transactional<\/a>.\u201d Zambia was pressed<\/a> to open its mineral wealth<\/a> to American access in return for health assistance. Zimbabwe and Ghana have pushed back<\/a> on agreements that would require them to hand over biological samples<\/a> and health data with no guarantee they’d ever benefit from the resulting vaccines or treatments.<\/p>\n You cannot run a global health effort like a trade deal \u2014 because a virus is not a counterparty. It does not negotiate. It does not honor a memorandum of understanding. It does not pause at the border between Ituri and North Kivu (two provinces in the DRC), or between the DRC and Uganda, to make sure the paperwork is in order.<\/p>\n![\"Health](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26149531279497.jpg\")
Health workers prepare for duty at the Ebola treatment center in Rwampara in the Ituri Province of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on May 29. (Moses Sawasawa\/ AP)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26156656453346.jpg\")
A health worker disinfects an ambulance at a treatment center that transported a suspected Ebola patient in Mongbwalu, a small town in the Djugu Territory of the Ituri Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on June 5. (Moses Sawasawa\/ AP)<\/p>\n