Trump Just Made America More Vulnerable to Ebola—Here’s How

America's Ebola shield is gone.

On 12 May 2018 in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a health worker at Bikoro Hospital, the epicenter of the latest Ebola outbreak in the DRC. (Credit: WHO)

Ebola is in Kampala.

Ugandan authorities yesterday confirmed the death of a healthcare worker—a nurse—from Ebola. A city of over 4 million is now at the center of an outbreak. The fact that a healthcare worker was affected suggests that the virus is already spreading in high-risk settings.

Under normal circumstances, there would be no need to panic. Since the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, local health officials in Africa and the international community have become skilled at containing outbreaks before they spread out of control. There have been at least eight separate outbreaks in the region, but all have been contained. None spread internationally, least of all to the United States.

At the center of these efforts to stop the international spread of Ebola are the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States Agency for International Development. These agencies work with local authorities and provide platforms for international cooperation that help develop and deploy vaccines, conduct disease surveillance, and work directly with local health officials to provide capacity where it may be lacking.

This "playbook" has successfully kept Ebola and similar diseases (like Marburg virus) at bay. There have been several outbreaks, but they’ve all been contained thanks to this kind of international cooperation, in which the U.S. plays a key role.

Stephanie Psaki, the former U.S. coordinator for global health security at the National Security Council, explains how this U.S.-led cooperation has worked:

"We had made it to January 2025 without a single case of [Ebola or Marburg] in the United States. One of the reasons we were successful was that we had a plan in place—a playbook—for responding to biological threats, which we implemented quickly and aggressively every time there was a new outbreak. We had partners in place, from WHO to vaccine manufacturers, who were on standby and ready to act. We had emergency funding available that could quickly be redirected. And we had people—at the National Security Council and across federal departments and agencies—who had responded to countless biological threats, could get on a plane at a moment’s notice if needed, and, most importantly, who knew how to keep Americans safe."

But now, there’s no one left to execute that playbook. Trump fired most of them.

Most, if not all, of the American officials whose job it is to stop Ebola before it spreads to the United States are now out of work. Those who are still in office are banned from engaging in the kind of international cooperation required to support an Ebola response in Africa.

Earlier this week, Trump laid off most of the workforce at USAID, completely gutting the agency. This includes staff and contractors from USAID’s Global Health Bureau and the agency’s frontline Disaster Assistance Response Team, which would spring into action at the first sign of an Ebola outbreak. Under normal circumstances, USAID would deploy special units to Ebola hot zones like this. But now, there is hardly a USAID to speak of. USAID, as we’ve known it, has been disbanded.

Meanwhile, at the CDC, officials are barred from even communicating with the WHO. A memo from CDC official John Nkengasong instructed staff to halt engagements with WHO across various platforms, including technical working groups and advisory boards. This directive follows President Trump’s executive order to withdraw the U.S. from WHO.

Simply put, the methods and strategy that have successfully kept Americans safe from eight Ebola outbreaks over the last decade are no longer operational. The successful strategy of helping countries contain Ebola at the source can no longer be carried out because Trump has gutted USAID, frozen foreign aid, and barred cooperation with the World Health Organization.

Now, with a new outbreak in a major urban center, Americans suddenly much more vulnerable to one of the world’s deadliest viruses than they should be.