My colleagues and I published op-eds about Ebola this week. Here's where we agree.
Ebola experts published op-eds this week. Different angles, same diagnosis: the response infrastructure was dismantled before the virus arrived.
This week, my colleagues and I each published op-eds about the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo and Uganda. We come at it from different angles, but we agree on the fundamentals: this outbreak is extremely dangerous, the world is less prepared than it was in 2014, and the dismantling of U.S. global health infrastructure has made things worse.
In our USA Today piece, we focused on the structural conditions. This outbreak has every risk factor that made the 2014 West Africa epidemic a catastrophe — no vaccine, no treatment, delayed detection, a collapsed local health system — plus armed conflict, refugee camps, and a major international travel hub in Kampala. The specific people trained to do contact tracing and containment had their jobs cut when USAID funding ended.
Dr. Craig Spencer, writing in The New York Times, drew on his experience as an Ebola survivor. He described the dismantling of rapid response teams, the CDC’s loss of a quarter of its staff, and the direct fallout already visible: lab samples transported at the wrong temperatures and a month-long detection delay. He called for the U.S. to mobilize funding, coordinate with the WHO, and accelerate treatment development.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, in The Washington Post, reached the same conclusion. He credited African nations for building real capacity since 2014, then argued that U.S. budget cuts and vacant leadership positions have widened dangerous gaps. He framed the outbreak as a test of the administration’s own stated commitment to contain threats at their source.
Where we converge: the response infrastructure has been deliberately weakened. And delay is what turns an outbreak into an epidemic.
