Ranking Member DeLauro Statement on the Latest Ebola Outbreak
WASHINGTON – Today, House Appropriations Committee and Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) issued the following statement on how President Trump’s cuts, firings, and misguided priorities have weakened global health security:
“Investments in global health are investments in our national security. But since his first day in office, President Trump has unleased chaos and put Americans at risk. The Trump administration dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), cut the United States off from the World Health Organization, and carried out mass layoffs across the domestic and global public health spaces. While some of these actions were reversed, and Congress fought in the 2026 funding bills to fill the dangerously reduced global health footprint, the latest Ebola outbreak shines a light on the need for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to have the resources it needs to conduct ongoing disease surveillance, rapidly respond to this Ebola outbreak, and engage with other international actors to prevent future infectious disease outbreaks.
“I cannot help but wonder if the administration had not taken such drastic action to dismantle so much of our global health infrastructure, that we would have been able to identify this outbreak earlier and stop it from spreading as much as it has.
“Global health is not transactional. The latest Ebola outbreak exemplifies the need for ongoing coordination and collaboration — not the profit-driven trade agreements the Trump administration is pushing. CDC has extensive experience and some of the world’s foremost experts. They are supporting the current Ebola response, and we must ensure they are embedded within other countries ministries of health so that CDC can support rapid containment of this and other deadly outbreaks. As we move forward with the 2027 funding process, CDC has my full support in their efforts to protect global health security.”
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