For all you MAGA-types, THIS is why we need the programs of USAID. And the World Health Organization. And the Centers for Disease Control. From the article:
An unidentified illness has killed scores of people and infected hundreds in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization has reported, with preliminary investigations tracing the outbreak to three children who in January ate a bat and died.
Fifty-three people in the country’s northwest had died from the disease, out of 431 reported cases as of Feb. 15, and “with nearly half of the deaths occurring within 48 hours of symptom onset” in one of two identified clusters, according to a weekly bulletinpublished by the W.H.O.’s Africa office.
“The outbreak, which has seen cases rise rapidly within days, poses a significant public health threat,” the report said, and “the exact cause remains unknown.”
Victims’ symptoms have included fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and body aches, among others. The children who perished from the illness also had bled from the nose and vomited blood.
A new, unknown hemorragic fever because three kids ate a bat. Maybe they ate a bat because they were starving. Or because they didn’t know any better, or because tradition. Either way, nutrition and education, two pillars of USAID’s work, could have prevented this.
One of these days a new disease is going to come roaring out of the jungle and take a big chunk of humanity. And we won’t have the guardrails of WHO and CDC to protect us.
I can hear the pushback now, “…USAID was a rampant with fraud and useless programs…”, or something like that. But cut out the cancer; don’t kill the patient. Sure, I disagree with some of USAID’s programs and spending. We don’t need to spend money on exporting culture war behaviors (my culture war list includes religion, race, gender, sexual preference – just stay the hell away from those issues). But education, nutrition, clean water, medicine…those are universal needs. And the more healthy and educated people we have in the world, the better.