By Megan R. Wilson

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In today’s issue:

• A Democratic senator slams “leadership vacuum” at leading federal research institute during a growing Ebola outbreak
• Why there isn’t yet a vaccine for the Ebola strain driving the current outbreak — and how long one could take
• Humanitarian groups say foreign aid cuts by Western countries have left the Democratic Republic of Congo underprepared as Ebola cases surge

This is Health Brief, and thanks for checkin’ in. The Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Thursday morning focused on the National Institutes of Health budget, and there were expectations that it would largely be a rehash of previous fights.

After all, the Trump administration proposed — for the second year in a row — to cut the NIH’s budget by billions of dollars, which has faced bipartisan resistance in Congress. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who leads the full appropriations panel, said during Thursday’s hearing that she found parts of the administration’s proposal “inexplicable.”

But the hearing also exposed a growing problem within the federal government’s research institutes amid a deadly disease outbreak abroad. That’s what I want to explore in today’s issue.

→ As a programming note, the newsletter will only publish on Wednesday and Friday next week. But I’m still working! Let’s catch up on what’s most pressing for you in health policy and Washington more generally.

And don’t forget that I work for tips. Please send any intel, documents or scoops to megan.wilson@washpost.com, or message me on Signal at megan.434.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) pressed National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya about funding cuts and staff turnover during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Thursday. (Annabelle Gordon/Reuters)

	The Lead Brief

The leadership turmoil at the National Institutes of Health spilled further into public view Thursday when Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) said during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing that Jeffery Taubenberger is no longer serving as acting head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Taubenberger had been scheduled to testify but then “stepped down from his position,” Baldwin noted in her opening statement. She added that “other top officials at NIAID have also reportedly been reassigned and forced out of their positions.”

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At the hearing, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya didn’t address the concerns.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, did not respond to an inquiry regarding Taubenberger — who is listed as chief of the viral pathogenesis and evolution section at NIAID in the staff directory — stepping down from the acting director role.

NIAID has lacked a permanent director since the departure of former director Jeanne Marrazzo last year.

Although STAT reported that there has been chatter about Taubenberger stepping aside two weeks ago, he still appears as acting NIAID director on the NIH website, which was most recently updated Wednesday.

The timing is striking: It comes as a fast-moving Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is suspected of killing at least 139 people — and is raising alarms among global health officials.

While NIH does not manage the federal government’s response to disease outbreaks, NIAID has historically been a critical part of researching and developing treatments and vaccines for infectious diseases, including Ebola.

“In the midst of an emerging Ebola outbreak, we have a leadership vacuum at the world’s premier infectious-disease institute and across our health agencies,” Baldwin said. “This is of great concern.”

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Last week, Nature reported that three more senior NIAID officials had been pushed out of the institute, an increase since the beginning of the second Trump administration.

→ Other leadership positions across NIH also remain vacant or filled by temporary officials, including at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Nursing Research. Almost half of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers are being run by acting leaders.

The churn has fueled concerns inside and outside the agency that NIH — particularly NIAID — is losing institutional expertise at a moment when infectious-disease threats are accelerating globally.

Taubenberger is a virologist who rose to prominence leading the research effort that mapped the genome of the 1918 influenza virus. He’s been working more recently to develop a flu vaccine aimed at protecting against multiple flu strains rather than a single seasonal variant.

	Immunization Update

A vaccine won’t be arriving anytime soon to help contain the Ebola outbreak now raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo, report The Post’s Carolyn Y. Johnson and Rachel Roubein.

There are currently no approved vaccines targeting Bundibugyo — the strain believed to be driving the outbreak — and global health officials say the most promising candidates are still at least six to nine months away from being developed.

That leaves public health officials relying on more traditional containment measures: identifying cases, tracing contacts and isolating infected patients. But experts warn those efforts are being complicated by militia violence, political instability and major cuts to international health funding.

THE CANDIDATES

→ Two Ebola vaccines already exist, including Merck’s Ervebo, which was developed for the Zaire strain responsible for the devastating West Africa epidemic that started in 2014. Neither targets Bundibugyo.

• One leading vaccine candidate meant to target the most recent strain uses the same basic platform as Ervebo. In 2013, an experimental version tailored against Bundibugyo successfully protected monkeys against the disease. However, it hasn’t ever been manufactured to meet the requirements for human testing, my colleagues report.

Thomas Geisbert, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch who helped develop the Ervebo vaccine, said it could take eight to nine months before it can be tested in humans.

• Another experimental candidate, which uses the same vaccine platform as AstraZeneca’s covid vaccine, is being developed by researchers at the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India.

“They are manufacturing that as we speak, but there is no animal data to support that,” said Vasee Moorthy, senior adviser on research and development at the World Health Organization. “It is possible that doses of that could be available for clinical trial in two to three months, but there is a lot of uncertainty about that — and it will depend on the animal data as to whether that is considered a promising candidate,” Moorthy said.

POTENTIAL TREATMENTS

In the meantime, researchers are racing to evaluate antibody treatments that might work across multiple strains of Ebola.

• Mapp Biopharmaceutical is working on a monoclonal antibody called MBP134. Although it was designed to protect against the Sudan version of Ebola, early human testing has shown its efficacy against multiple strains.
• Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has an approved Ebola antibody cocktail called Inmazeb that was developed in response to the West African outbreak. But there is hope stemming from laboratory testing showing it could be active against past Bundibugyo Ebola strains. The company told The Post that it is trying to determine whether its cocktail is active against the current strain, and is working with government officials.

Satish Pillai, the incident manager for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ebola response, said at a Wednesday press briefing that “there are active discussions” concerning when monoclonal products can get to some of the affected countries.

Read the full story: “There is no Ebola vaccine for this outbreak and won’t be one soon. Here’s why.”

	From our notebook

Meanwhile, health workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo say they know how to stop Ebola outbreaks; what they lack now are the resources.

Sweeping cuts by the United States and other Western countries have left frontline health agencies dangerously underprepared as this Ebola outbreak erupted, Rael Ombuor, Rachel Chason, Lauren Weber and Lena H. Sun report in a story for The Post.

→ U.S. foreign assistance to Congo plummeted from roughly $1.4 billion in 2024 and $430 million in 2025 to about $21 million allocated for fiscal 2026, according to U.S. government data.

The outbreak has spread with alarming speed. By Wednesday, the WHO had identified nearly 600 suspected cases and an estimated 139 deaths, almost double the suspected caseload reported just days earlier. When the WHO declared the outbreak a global public health emergency on Sunday, there had been an estimated 88 deaths.

Earlier this year, the U.S. formally exited WHO, citing unfair financial demands, its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and a failure to implement reforms.

→ As cases have surged, aid groups and health officials told my colleagues they lack the staff, emergency supplies and training for health care workers that they need to quickly detect early infections or contain the virus.

Manenji Mangundu, Oxfam’s country director in Congo, said that at the same point during previous outbreaks, there were more coordination centers set up by the WHO, more personal protective equipment coming in, and more isolation and triage centers established.

While there are daily cross-agency meetings about coordination that occur with representatives from the WHO, the CDC, the United Nations, nonprofit organizations and Congolese officials, Mangundu said funding requests are often met with blank stares.

The State Department has sharply rejected assertions by aid groups that cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development impacted the ability to respond to Ebola, The Post reports.

Tommy Pigott, a spokesperson for the department, said in a statement Tuesday that U.S. efforts were “more aligned and effective” because funding is coming through an agency within the State Department rather than a separate entity such as USAID.

Pigott announced that the U.S. would fund 50 treatment centers, and in recent days said the U.S. had mobilized $23 million in bilateral assistance to Congo to help contain the outbreak.

But, on the ground, humanitarian organizations say the effects of funding cuts by the U.S. and some European countries have been unmistakable.

The International Rescue Committee said nearly 60 percent of its health facilities in the outbreak zone closed last year after funding dried up. CARE said it lost nearly one-third of its budget after the Trump administration dismantled USAID, and the humanitarian organization said it had to lay off dozens of community health workers.

Read the full story: “Ebola responders say aid cuts by Western nations left them ill-equipped for outbreak.”

	What We’re Reading

“A $5 Million Donation From Big Tobacco Preceded F.D.A. Vape Decision,” Kenneth P. Vogel and Christina Jewett report at the New York Times.

“HHS Launches Crackdown Using AI to Detect Medicaid Fraud and Waste,” Liz Essley Whyte reports at the Wall Street Journal.

“In Alzheimer’s, Bristol Myers sees big promise beyond amyloid,” Jacob Bell writes at BioPharma Dive.

“RFK Jr. terminates heads of preventive services task force amid overhaul,” CNN’s Tami Luhby writes.

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