Gutting USAID is already having a devastating impact around the world. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, teams that would normally be racing to identify a fatal sickness are gone.

The World Health Organization has confirmed multiple outbreak clusters of an unidentified illness. Hundreds have become sick and dozens have died. The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed that a worrying mystery illness is spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Is a new virus causing a disease outbreak and deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or is the cause already known to science?

Reports of a large number of unexplained illnesses and deaths in Equateur province have garnered international attention, likely in part because this region of DRC has had several Ebola outbreaks in recent years.