A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The head of the World Health Organization said today that the risk of the Ebola outbreak spreading around the world is low, but the risk in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda is high. Aid groups are scrambling to respond, and a new report finds that the global aid system that they are a part of is failing to address many crises. NPR global health correspondent Fatma Tanis is here. So how is the aid system failing?
FATMA TANIS, BYLINE: The bottom line, A, is the authors say the humanitarian system was created in a different reality post-World War II, and it's no longer fit for purpose today. This report comes from the Lancet Commission on Health and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health. I spoke with its, author Paul Spiegel, and he says the aid sector has essentially become this big business where politics, power, money and prestige are the drivers. It's fragmented, underresourced and politicized.
PAUL SPIEGEL: And while it's done a lot of good, it really has lost, I think, its purpose of meaning - to serve people affected from conflict and forced displacement from around the world.
TANIS: The system is no longer meeting the needs of the people it's meant to serve and needs reform, he says.
MARTÍNEZ: So how do they come to that conclusion?
TANIS: So over the past two years, the commission conducted hundreds of interviews. With recipients of aid, they found that many people were not able to differentiate between all the various NGOs and the United Nations agencies and largely felt that their needs were not being met. In talking to humanitarian workers, they found this sense that public and private donors were dictating where the money should go, and it was less about what the actual needs were. There was also a lot of inequality, Spiegel says. For example, he says, the aid that Ukrainian refugees received in the Ukraine war was a lot more compared to what Syrian refugees received when they were displaced.
MARTÍNEZ: And the U.S. and other wealthy nations seem to be cutting aid.
TANIS: Yes. And that factors here because Spiegel says, you know, the overall flux in the system right now means there's actually a once-in-a-generation opportunity to drastically reform the way humanitarian aid is done. And this report suggests things like shifting the power of decision-making from the donors to affected communities, making sure people are helped equally and that the money is flowing based on need, not politics. Now, on the other hand, the cuts have aid groups reeling and reacting right now instead of being able to come up with new strategies, he says.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, I know the United States has historically been a leader in global aid, but what's its role now?
TANIS: The U.S. is still the largest funder of aid, even after all these cuts, so it still has influence. And in the past six months, we've seen the administration sort of backtrack from its initial stance of dismantling the foreign aid system. Its new stated vision for aid is more accountability, more money going to people rather than organizations. And Spiegel says that's a good thing. But, he says, the U.S. is still contributing to some of the system failures, such as politicizing aid. The administration is handpicking which countries get to have aid, and it's largely left out places like Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia, where millions of people are in dire need.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. Earlier, I mentioned the Ebola outbreak in the DRC. How does this report suggest aid comes into play in a situation like that?
TANIS: So Spiegel and other experts say that to effectively control an outbreak, it's key to have empowered local systems. Right now there's a lack of supplies in the DRC. Clinics are waiting for help to come from the outside. And Spiegel says, in a better system, the ability of local officials to detect the outbreak sooner and manage it on their own would be much stronger.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR global health correspondent Fatma Tanis. Thanks a lot.
TANIS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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