"One health provider who works on the ground says that basic medical equipment like masks and hand sanitizers are in short supply due to funding cuts."

"As an Ebola outbreak rages in central and East Africa, public health workers say that the response has been stymied by the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid and global health organizations.

“We are no longer able to get some supplies,” Amadou Bocoum, Democratic Republic of Congo country director for the anti-poverty nonprofit CARE, tells WIRED. “Because of that, we are not able to react immediately.”

Bocoum says that basic medical equipment like masks and hand sanitizers, as well as components necessary for testing, are in short supply due to funding cuts.

WIRED spoke to more than half a dozen global health experts who described how the Trump administration’s move to shutter the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), amid other funding cuts, has created a strained, increasingly fragmented disease prevention and response system in the lead up to this Ebola outbreak, one in which a severely reduced workforce already struggles with burnout."

Kate Knibbs and Leah Feiger report for WIRED May 20, 2026. [2]