75% of Americans Want Trump to Restore Aid During Deadly Ebola Outbreak

A new poll shows that three out of four Americans want the U.S. government to restore aid funding to help stop an Ebola outbreak in Central Africa. The outbreak is spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also called the DRC, and Uganda. Public health officials are warning it could become one of the worst Ebola outbreaks ever recorded. The poll was released even though President Donald Trump cut billions of dollars from U.S. foreign aid last year.

The survey was conducted by a research group called Echelon Insights for The Rockefeller Foundation. It included more than 2,000 American adults. The results showed that 75 percent of people backed restoring funds to fight the outbreak. Support came from across the political spectrum — even 52 percent of Trump supporters said they agreed.

The poll also found that 90 percent of Americans supported funding disease prevention programs in other countries. About 72 percent said they wanted to restore some or all global health funding because of the outbreak. Experts say these programs are important for catching dangerous diseases before they spread widely.

Health experts say that sudden cuts to U.S. and Western foreign aid have made the Ebola outbreak worse. When the funding was cut, many important services were shut down, including disease prevention programs. Without those programs, it became much harder to track and stop the spread of Ebola. Some experts also say the cuts led to more violence in the region, which made the crisis even more difficult to manage.

In July of last year, the U.S. Agency for International Development — known as USAID — was officially shut down. USAID used to run many programs that helped people around the world stay healthy and safe. Most of its work was ended, and only a small part was moved into the U.S. State Department. The agency was shut down by a temporary government group called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was set up by Trump and led by billionaire Elon Musk. DOGE itself was also shut down earlier this month.

Samantha Power, the last head of USAID, spoke about the decision in an interview with NPR. She said she was both shocked and horrified when the agency was closed. "I could not believe in the first instance that any human would suspend assistance, particularly life-saving assistance, without taking into account the human consequences," she said. She felt that the cuts happened too quickly, without giving people time to adjust.

Since the outbreak was declared in mid-May, more than 500 people have died in the DRC. There are 1,561 confirmed cases, and health workers believe many more cases may have gone undetected. The disease is still spreading through communities in the region. The DRC is already one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with 21 million people urgently needing help and 1 million who have fled to other countries.

Africa's Centers for Disease Control has warned that ten nearby countries could also be at risk. Many of those countries already have weak health systems that would struggle to handle an outbreak. Scientists published a study in a medical journal called The Lancet Infectious Diseases predicting that the disease could spread to South Sudan within weeks. Health officials around the world are watching the situation closely and urging action before the outbreak grows even larger.