The White House is asking Congress for more than $1.4 billion in emergency funding to respond to the widening Ebola outbreak, including money for a controversial quarantine facility in Kenya for Americans exposed to the virus, a Trump administration official said.
The request was included in a wider supplemental funding letter sent to Congress on Wednesday, as Washington moves to prevent the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo from spreading further and reaching the United States.
The package includes $800 million for humanitarian crisis response, covering supplies, treatment, contact tracing, infection-control measures, a regional logistics network and the Kenya quarantine centre, the official said.
Another $500 million is being sought for global health security efforts, including disease surveillance, laboratory capacity, cross-border coordination and possible partnerships with multilateral agencies and the private sector.
The administration is also asking for $90 million for diplomatic operations, including evacuations and transport of infected U.S. citizens to treatment facilities.
The request could face resistance in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties, including some Republicans, have criticized the Trump administration for refusing to spend previously approved foreign aid funds, including money for medical programs abroad.
Washington has also faced criticism over cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and African public health programs before the outbreak, which experts say weakened the early response.
The outbreak in Congo has been linked to the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola. It has infected more than 1,000 people and killed 267, according to the World Health Organization, making it the largest number of confirmed cases recorded in the first month of any Ebola outbreak.
“This is a very serious outbreak, and so a very serious response is needed now,” said Josh Michaud, a public health analyst with KFF.
Michaud said the $1.4 billion request appeared broadly in line with the scale of the response needed, noting that the United States spent about $266 million during the smaller Congo outbreak between 2018 and 2020.
But he said the details would matter, particularly because part of the money is tied to the Kenya quarantine centre, which is designed to keep any American cases from reaching U.S. territory.
The U.S. has already pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to the Ebola response. On June 18, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it would make $107 million in emergency funding available to strengthen domestic and international preparedness, warning that the outbreak could become the worst on record.
Washington has also provided doses of an experimental antibody treatment for clinical trials, expanding access beyond its earlier position of reserving the drug only for Americans.
The outbreak has already raised alarm outside Africa. France confirmed that a doctor who recently returned from a humanitarian mission in Congo had tested positive for Ebola, the country’s first case linked to the current outbreak.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that the risk of wider global spread remained low.