To contain the Ebola virus, the United States must keep its promise to the World Health Organization

In recent weeks, Nature reports on the efforts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to combat the intensification of the Ebola epidemic in a war zone.

Since August 2018, approximately 2,408 people have contracted the virus and more than 1,600 have died as a result of the disease. Our journalist visited Ebola stakeholders working with the World Health Organization in the cities of Beni, Butembo and Katwa in North Kivu, a province in eastern DRC . People who have responded to the epidemic are treating people with Ebola, finding their contacts, offering vaccination with a new vaccine, and monitoring hundreds of informal shops that treat people with a range of medicines and herbs.

These tasks are complicated because many people do not trust the intentions of the stakeholders. This mistrust stems from decades of violence, political instability and neglect of basic care in a region that has suffered 25 years of conflict.

The ongoing attacks and kidnappings in areas of Ebola spread mean that most international aid groups have far fewer field workers than do WHO and the Ministry. of the DRC. Staff from both groups received bullets, grenades and stones, but remain committed to ending the epidemic. However, if the purse strings tighten and the WHO can not continue its work, the epidemic will certainly accelerate. It's only a matter of time before the virus crosses the borders.

Yet the governments of the seven largest economies in the world have not committed sufficient funds to WHO. Between February and June, the organization requested US $ 98 million for the Ebola response; as Nature in press, the agency had received less than half that amount. His efforts remain afloat because WHO has been able to draw on funds from some of its other budgets.

Among the G7 countries, Germany and the United Kingdom are on the right track with combined pledges of nearly $ 16 million for the WHO response to the Ebola virus in North Kivu this year. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington and other non-government donors have donated nearly $ 8 million this year. But the United States, Canada, France, Italy and Japan have not contributed. And because the United States is considered the world's largest funder of emergency health care, its deficit is disconcerting. The United States would have contributed $ 31 million to the Ebola response this year, and among the recipients are aid groups and other UN agencies, but not the United States. WHO.

There are some possible explanations for this gap. The first is not said, but applies to the largest epidemic of this disease in West Africa: Ebola has not yet spread to rich countries. Another is that WHO has been criticized for not having completely mastered the epidemic despite its courageous efforts. In response to such comments, WHO began to share more responsibilities with other UN agencies in May, recognizing that the situation required not only biomedical badistance, but also political and humanitarian expertise.

Concerns about WHO's approach to accounting may be another reason why countries such as the United States are holding back. On June 26, during a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank, Tim Ziemer, senior official of the US Agency for International Development (US Agency) , suggested that WHO had not been sufficiently transparent about how its funds were spent.

The demands for transparency are fair, but that's no reason for the US or other governments to hold back funds at this critical juncture. Institutions such as the World Bank can audit the WHO response while the agency remains focused on the ground. After all, his efforts have often paid off when they are supported and not interrupted by violence.

At last month's G20 summit in Japan, high-income countries, including the United States, declared their full support for the Ebola response. They must now keep this promise made to WHO. If countries procrastinate, the world risks reiterating the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, in which a slow response has contributed to the loss of more than 11,300 lives in Africa and at a cost over 3 billions of dollars for taxpayers. The WHO only needs a fraction of this sum to avoid a horrible repetition of history.