‘Perfect Storm’: How Trump’s Aid Cuts Are Fueling the Ebola Outbreak
‘Perfect Storm’: How Trump’s Aid Cuts Are Fueling the Ebola Outbreak
“完美风暴”：特朗普的援助削减如何加剧了埃博拉疫情
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. 随着埃博拉疫情在中非和东非肆虐，公共卫生工作者表示，特朗普政府对外国援助和全球卫生组织的削减，阻碍了应对工作。
“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.” 反贫困非营利组织 CARE 刚果民主共和国国家主任阿马杜·博库姆（Amadou Bocoum）告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志：“我们现在无法获得一些物资。正因如此，我们无法立即做出反应。”
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. 博库姆表示，由于资金削减，口罩和洗手液等基本医疗设备以及检测所需的组件目前供应短缺。
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. 《连线》采访了六位多位全球卫生专家，他们描述了特朗普政府在削减其他资金的同时关闭美国国际开发署（USAID）的举措，是如何在本次埃博拉疫情爆发前，造成了一个紧张且日益碎片化的疾病预防和应对系统，而在这个系统中，本已严重缩减的工作人员正苦于精疲力竭。
“We are so far behind in this outbreak,” says a current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employee with outbreak experience. “This is a perfect storm.” “我们在这次疫情应对中已经严重滞后，”一位有疫情应对经验的现任美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）员工表示，“这是一场完美风暴。”
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak an emergency “of international concern” on May 16. There is no vaccine or treatment for this strain of Ebola, known as Bundibugyo. There were over 530 confirmed cases and 134 deaths as of May 19, and both numbers are rising quickly. According to the CDC, 25 to 50 percent of people who contract the strain will die from it. 世界卫生组织（WHO）于 5 月 16 日宣布埃博拉疫情为“国际关注的突发公共卫生事件”。目前，这种被称为“本迪布焦”（Bundibugyo）的埃博拉病毒株尚无疫苗或治疗方法。截至 5 月 19 日，已有超过 530 例确诊病例和 134 例死亡病例，且这两个数字都在迅速上升。据 CDC 称，感染该病毒株的人群中，死亡率在 25% 到 50% 之间。
“People really need to understand that if this is not handled carefully, it will get wild very easily,” says Bocoum. “It’s really key that we need to react fast to contain it.” “人们真的需要明白，如果处理不当，疫情很容易失控，”博库姆说，“关键在于我们必须迅速反应以遏制它。”
The outbreak was first identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri region, an area that borders South Sudan and Uganda and is known as a thruway for refugees. There have already been confirmed cases in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, from people who had traveled there from Congo. Travelers frequently cross the region’s border, especially at this time of year, with thousands of pilgrims expected to travel from Congo to Uganda for an annual event. While Uganda postponed the celebration due to Ebola fears, it’s not clear how quickly information about the cancellation will spread, especially in rural communities. 疫情最初是在刚果民主共和国的伊图里地区发现的，该地区与南苏丹和乌干达接壤，是著名的难民通道。乌干达首都坎帕拉已经出现了从刚果旅行至此的确诊病例。旅客经常跨越该地区边境，特别是在每年的这个时候，预计有数千名朝圣者将从刚果前往乌干达参加年度活动。虽然乌干达因担心埃博拉疫情而推迟了庆祝活动，但目前尚不清楚取消活动的消息传播速度有多快，特别是在农村社区。
In February 2025, as Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) dismantled USAID, the billionaire told Trump administration officials that DOGE had “accidentally” cut funding to Ebola prevention and then restored it. However, as WIRED reported at the time, lifesaving work on Ebola and other infectious disease prevention was not restored. DOGE also slashed the CDC, causing another key global health player to atrophy. In April 2025, the Trump administration instructed a US National Institute of Health facility tasked with studying Ebola to stop its research. 2025 年 2 月，当埃隆·马斯克所谓的“政府效率部”（DOGE）解散 USAID 时，这位亿万富翁告诉特朗普政府官员，DOGE 是“不小心”削减了埃博拉预防资金，随后又恢复了。然而，正如《连线》当时报道的那样，针对埃博拉和其他传染病预防的救命工作并未得到恢复。DOGE 还大幅削减了 CDC 的预算，导致另一个关键的全球卫生参与者萎缩。2025 年 4 月，特朗普政府指示负责研究埃博拉病毒的美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）设施停止其研究工作。
Prior to the DOGE cuts, USAID was a critical part of the DRC’s infectious disease prevention, treatment, and containment policies. The US embassy in Kinshasa, the country’s capital city, noted in 2024 that the agency had provided treatment to 11 million people for deadly diseases like tuberculosis and HIV that year alone, and that it had also played a key role in containing six prior Ebola outbreaks. 在 DOGE 削减预算之前，USAID 是刚果民主共和国传染病预防、治疗和遏制政策的关键组成部分。美国驻金沙萨（该国首都）大使馆在 2024 年指出，该机构仅在那一年就为 1100 万人提供了结核病和艾滋病毒等致命疾病的治疗，并在遏制此前的六次埃博拉疫情中发挥了关键作用。
“We’re missing a huge player in the response right now,” the current CDC employee with outbreak experience tells WIRED. “We used to coordinate really, really closely during these outbreaks with USAID because we may be able to get public health responders out and public health response out immediately—that’s one of our jobs and our goals in these outbreaks at CDC—but USAID could get materials and funding out rapidly, and that was one of their specialties.” “我们现在失去了一个重要的应对参与者，”那位有疫情经验的现任 CDC 员工告诉《连线》，“在过去的疫情中，我们过去常与 USAID 进行非常紧密的协调，因为我们能够派遣公共卫生响应人员并立即启动公共卫生应对措施——这是我们在 CDC 应对疫情的工作和目标之一——但 USAID 能够迅速调拨物资和资金，这是他们的专长之一。”
“In a perfect world,” they added, “the WHO could pick up [slack]. But they’re also unfunded by the US. So we’ve cut off two of the main ways people would get support for this outbreak.” The United States withdrew from WHO in January 2026, completing a process started when Trump issued an executive order on the first day of his second term, contributing to major funding shortfalls and staff reductions. “在理想情况下，”他们补充道，“世卫组织本可以填补这一空缺。但他们也失去了美国的资助。所以我们切断了人们获得此次疫情支持的两大主要途径。”美国于 2026 年 1 月退出世卫组织，完成了特朗普在第二个任期第一天签署行政令所启动的程序，这导致了严重的资金短缺和人员裁减。
The CDC did not respond to questions about how funding cuts had impacted its response. CDC spokesperson Melissa Dibble referred WIRED to a statement the agency posted about its international response. CDC 没有回应关于资金削减如何影响其应对工作的提问。CDC 发言人梅丽莎·迪布尔（Melissa Dibble）将《连线》引向了该机构发布的一份关于其国际应对工作的声明。
The CDC has teams on the ground working with the WHO to coordinate a global response. However, the employee says, the team’s capacity has been diminished by cuts and the loss of leadership. “They will get burnt out. They will not be able to work 16 hour days for two months in a row, and they will need backfill,” the employee says. “They will need people to come in and roll on and off the response to assist them, and that pool that they have to pull from is much, much smaller than it was just a year ago.” Other teams that would traditionally be part of the response, they add, aren’t currently joining, “because they’re already so short-staffed in their own work that they can’t safely do so.” CDC 有团队在实地与世卫组织合作，协调全球应对工作。然而，该员工表示，由于预算削减和领导层流失，团队的能力已经减弱。“他们会精疲力竭。他们无法连续两个月每天工作 16 个小时，他们需要替补人员，”该员工说，“他们需要有人轮换加入应对工作来协助他们，而他们可以调动的人才库比一年前小得多。”他们补充说，其他传统上会参与应对工作的团队目前并未加入，“因为他们自己的人手已经非常短缺，无法安全地参与其中。”
Infectious disease physician Joia Mukherjee, a Harvard Medical School professor and clinical advisor to the medical nonprofit Partners In Health, believes that the outbreak “unequivocally” could have been caught sooner, had US aid not been slashed. 传染病医生、哈佛医学院教授兼医疗非营利组织“健康伙伴”（Partners In Health）临床顾问乔亚·穆克吉（Joia Mukherjee）认为，如果美国的援助没有被削减，这次疫情“毫无疑问”可以更早被发现。
Other experts concur. “When funding disruptions affect surveillance systems, workforce capacity, laboratory operations, vaccination efforts, infection prevention, and community-based response activities, it becomes harder to identify cases early and mount rapid containment measures,” says Anna Tate, a former biosecurity strategy lead at US Health and Human Services who now leads domestic programs for the global… 其他专家也表示赞同。曾任美国卫生与公众服务部生物安全战略负责人、现负责全球某机构国内项目的安娜·泰特（Anna Tate）表示：“当资金中断影响到监测系统、劳动力能力、实验室运作、疫苗接种工作、感染预防和社区应对活动时，早期识别病例并采取快速遏制措施就会变得更加困难。”