UN appeals for funds to help contain Uganda Ebola outbreak following U.S. cuts to foreign aid
The United Nations has launched an emergency appeal to raise $11.2 million to help fund Uganda’s response to an Ebola outbreak that has killed two people, after the country’s health budget was strained by U.S. cuts to foreign aid.
Uganda declared the outbreak of the highly infectious and often fatal haemorrhagic disease in January in the capital, Kampala, after the death of a male nurse at the East African country’s sole national referral hospital.
A second Ebola patient, a four-year-old child, died last week, the World Health Organization said, citing the country’s health ministry.
Uganda’s 10 confirmed cases have been linked to Ebola’s Sudan strain, which does not have an approved vaccine.
In a statement sent out on Tuesday, the U.N. said the funds would cover the Ebola response from March to May in seven high-risk districts.
“The goal is to rapidly contain the outbreak and address its impact on public health as well as the associated social-economic life of affected people,” said Kasonde Mwinga, Uganda representative for the World Health Organization (WHO), a U.N. agency.
Uganda has traditionally relied heavily on the U.S. for its health sector funding.
During the last Ebola outbreak in 2022-2023, the United States provided $34 million to fund case management, surveillance, diagnostics, laboratories, and infection prevention and control, among other activities, according to a U.S. Embassy report.
A WHO official said on Tuesday that U.S. aid cuts have affected surveillance of Ebola in Uganda, forcing the U.N. health agency to temporarily take on aspects of the emergency response previously done by other groups.
“I think the U.S. funding freeze has affected key outbreak response capacities for the current Ebola disease outbreak due to the Sudan virus in Uganda,” Dr. Janet Diaz from the World Health Emergencies programme told a Geneva press briefing after a trip to Uganda.
“WHO has had to step up and cover areas it usually doesn’t support, and that includes biological samples, transport and logistics, and the deployment of surveillance teams to points of entries,” she said.
WHO is also directly hit by U.S. funding cuts, with President Donald Trump ordering a withdrawal from the agency in January.
