ICYMI: Ranking Member Shaheen Discusses Ebola Outbreak with Ebola Survivor Dr. Craig Spencer

WASHINGTON - Today, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, highlighted the disastrous impact that the Trump Administration's dismantling of USAID programs has had on the fight against Ebola.

The Ranking Member sat down with Dr. Craig Spencer, an Ebola expert at Brown University, to discuss the Ebola outbreak in Eastern Africa and the ways in which the Trump Administration has endangered Americans by weakening our ability to combat infectious diseases like Ebola. From dismantling USAID, which allowed us to have eyes and ears on the ground to detect disease outbreaks, to withholding funding from organizations working on treatments, this Administration has undermined our ability to respond to this deadly outbreak.

Watch Ranking Member Shaheen's conversation with Dr. Spencer here.

Key Quotes from Ranking Member Shaheen:

• If we've dismantled USAID, which means that we don't have the ability to respond rapidly, and we're not supporting Gavi, then as you point out, it's important not just to the African countries where this outbreak is occurring, but as we saw with COVID, diseases don't respect borders. We need to make sure that people understand that it's in our interest here in the United States to ensure that we address those epidemics where they're occurring, because if we don't, then they're coming to the U.S.
  
  
• It's puzzling to me because we've had experience with Ebola. We had it in the outbreak that infected you. We saw it again in 2018 when it took several years to contain, we're seeing it now. And it's coming on the heels of the COVID pandemic, which affected everybody in the United States and globally. It's hard for me to understand why the lessons that we learned from that are being ignored as we're looking at this outbreak and the potential for it to spread.

Key Quotes from Dr. Spencer:

• I suspect that the size of this outbreak is dramatically larger and more dramatically widespread.
  
  
• Unfortunately, the U.S. learned about this a lot later than it normally would have, because we had tied and severed a lot of our relationships with these multilateral partners like the WHO [World Health Organization], meaning that the world was flat footed, but we were even more flat footed because of this delay. And the result is that we don't have a clear idea of what's happening on the ground. We're getting the cavalry in place, but we don't have all the horses that we need. And as it looks right now because of this delay, we have a backlog of testing, for example.
  
  
• I've been discouraged to see the number one stated priority of this Administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, say that number one is to keep Ebola out of the U.S. Now, I'm in full support. I would prefer to not have Ebola here, but that cannot be subservient to the much greater and more important priority which is ending the outbreak at its source. Because the longer we allow this outbreak to go uncontrolled, the greater the risk is not just to the region but to the U.S.
  
  
• Community trust is key. It's slower. It takes a lot of work. It's helpful to be doing that in advance as opposed to at the time of a crisis. I'm a doctor, I don't I never want to meet my team in the midst of a crisis. I want to know who they are beforehand so I can trust them, and they can trust me. And that's one of the challenges of not having those teams, including USAID folks, on the ground, that we've had for a long time that could be trusted beforehand.

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