A new Ebola outbreak in Uganda, with one nurse dead and two confirmed cases, is occurring as USAID halts all global health funding following a Trump executive order that paused foreign development assistance. Uganda previously contained a 2022-2023 outbreak in record time with significant US support ($22.3 million), but now faces the challenge of managing the deadly Sudan strain without this crucial international assistance.

TLDR

Elon Musk claimed DOGE "accidentally cancelled" Ebola funding but quickly restored it without interruption. Multiple experts and officials directly contradict this, providing evidence that:

  1. USAID's expertise and response infrastructure has been gutted
  2. The U.S. failed to respond to Uganda's recent Ebola outbreak
  3. No funds have actually been released despite claims of restoration

Elon Musk pclaimed in yesterday's cabinet meeting (February 26, 2025) that DOGE had "accidentally cancelled" Ebola prevention funding but immediately restored it with "no interruption."](https://47-watch.com/executive-orders/2025-02-26-remarks-by-president-trump-before-cabinet-meeting/) However, several sources directly refute this claim with evidence:

Jeremy Konyndyk, who previously led the federal government's response to the 2014-2015 West Africa Ebola outbreak as director of USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, called Musk's statement "bunk" and provided specific contradictory evidence:

  1. Most experts and operations staff at USAID have been pushed out
  2. USAID's operations centers have been shut down
  3. USAID's capacity to deploy response teams is "totally broken"
  4. DOGE has banned CDC leadership from communicating with WHO healthcare professionals

Dr. Spencer, an emergency medicine physician with global public health experience and an Ebola survivor, detailed specific consequences of the funding cuts:

  1. When Uganda reported an Ebola outbreak on January 29, the U.S. failed to dispatch Ebola specialists
  2. Ugandan officials attempted to contact the White House for days without response

Additionally, a USAID official directly contradicted Musk's claim about restoration, stating that "no funds for the agency's Ebola response had been released under President Donald Trump's January 20 funding freeze for foreign aid, including for efforts to combat the spread of the deadly virus".

Konyndyk characterized Musk's claims about restoring funding as merely "a fig-leaf effort to cover their asses politically" and stated that the government's capacity to respond to global outbreaks "has now been wrecked" by DOGE's cuts.