Marco Rubio, reproaches for the WHO: “It was a bit slow”. The US left the organization a few months ago
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that the World Health Organization (WHO), from which President Donald Trump withdrew the United States, was “a bit slow” in identifying the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), informs France Presse, taken over by Agerpres.
Asked by reporters how the United States intends to react, the secretary of state said: “The main actors will obviously be the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the main public health agency in the United States – no), as well as the World Health Organization, which, unfortunately, has been a little slow in identifying” this epidemic.
He said the United States, which has allocated $13 million in aid for “immediate response” operations, hopes to open about 50 clinics to treat Ebola in the DRC.
“It's a little difficult to access because it's a rural area (…) and a place where it's hard to get to, in a country devastated by war, unfortunately,” said Marco Rubio. “We will invest a lot of effort there,” he promised.
The United States, under the presidency of Donald Trump, formally withdrew from the WHO and cut funding to its Agency for International Development (USAID), which was heavily involved in the response to previous Ebola outbreaks.
The WHO warned on Tuesday about the “scale and speed” of the Ebola epidemic, which is already suspected to have caused more than 130 deaths and is spreading in eastern DRC.
