US Pledges to Fund Up to 50 Ebola Response Clinics in DRC; Total US Commitment Reaches ~$55M

The US State Department announced it would fund the establishment of up to 50 Ebola response clinics across DRC's affected provinces — Ituri, Nord-Kivu, and Sud-Kivu — and an additional $50 million contribution to the UN OCHA emergency fund for the outbreak response. This brought total US bilateral commitments to approximately $55 million ($23 million in initial emergency funding plus $32 million to IMC, UNICEF, MedAir, IOM, WFP, FHI 360, and Samaritan's Purse). The response clinic commitment addressed one of the most critical gaps identified by WHO: the absence of local treatment and triage infrastructure in peripheral health zones. CNN simultaneously reported on tensions surrounding the commitment, noting that prior US foreign aid cuts had eliminated several DRC health programs between 2025–2026, weakening the response infrastructure that emergency funding was now scrambling to rebuild. A senior US official told CNN that the 50-clinic commitment was designed to address community trust concerns by bringing care closer to affected populations and reducing the need for patients to travel to centralized ETUs — the same ETUs that had become targets for armed group attacks.