Rubio criticizes WHO’s Ebola response as US continues sweeping public health cuts

US secretary of state says WHO was ‘a little late’ in identifying deadly Ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on Tuesday that the World Health Organization (WHO) was “a little late” in identifying the deadly Ebola outbreak in the the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. On Tuesday, Rubio told reporters: “The lead is obviously going to be CDC [Centers for Disease Control] and the World Health Organization, which was a little late to identify this thing unfortunately.” His comments follow Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the WHO, a move which experts described as “sowing the seeds of the next pandemic”. Trump made the move in one of his first acts on returning to office last year. The US’s departure also led to the loss of nearly a quarter of the WHO’s workforce – about 2,000 jobs – from a total staff of about 9,400. Rubio said that the US, which has committed about $13m in assistance after sweeping aid cuts last year, was hoping to open about 50 clinics to treat Ebola in the DRC. “It’s a little tough to get to because it’s in a rural area … and [a] hard-to-get-to place in a war-torn