US Ebola Spending Plunged 99% in Five Years Since Last Outbreak

As the world’s leading public health officials gathered for emergency meetings in Geneva to discuss a deadly form of Ebola that’s likely circulated undetected for months in Africa, one group was missing from the table: a formal US delegation.

In past outbreaks, the US often led surveillance, laboratory support and emergency response efforts through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the now-dismantled US Agency for International Development. The large field teams and hundreds of millions of dollars the US once deployed during health emergencies are also absent. The work was culled by the US exit from the World ...