Bipartisan pair of senators urge Rubio to release aid to African women, children at risk of Ebola

Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., are urging the State Department to release hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to help women and infants affected by an Ebola outbreak in East Africa.

In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday, the senators urged him to use $608 million in congressionally-approved international family-planning funds and distribute $1.7 million in already purchased family-planning supplies.

The supplies — which the senators implied included condoms, hormonal contraception, post-rape care medicine and hemorrhage medicines — are being stored at a facility in Geel, Belgium, according to the letter.

The senators said that if the supplies aren’t used, their understanding is that they will be “destroyed.”

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“Ebola during pregnancy is catastrophic, with a nearly 100 percent fetal loss rate and catastrophic material mortality risk due to severe hemorrhaging,” the lawmakers wrote.

“By providing women with the option to voluntarily prevent unplanned pregnancies and to protect themselves from transmission of the virus and have access to clinics, the United States can prevent further deaths of women and the cruel and certain death of any fetus exposed to the virus,” they added.

The senators also asked the State Department to issue a “humanitarian exception” to support the United Nations Population Fund’s existing health clinics in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

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As of July 29, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had reported 3,532 Ebola cases in the DRC and 1,556 deaths, representing a mortality rate of roughly 44%.

In neighboring Uganda, there have been 20 confirmed cases and two deaths, according to the CDC.

Murkowski and Shaheen told the State Department that the virus’s rapid spread “leaves no time for delay in providing all possible interventions to save lives.”

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“The cost of [the] United States response is approaching $1 billion,” they wrote. “Investment now in voluntary family planning is fiscally rational in addition to being morally urgent.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment.

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The earliest known case in the latest Ebola outbreak involved a health worker in the DRC’s Ituri Province who developed symptoms in late April and later died, though the World Health Organization (WHO) believes transmission may have begun as early as March.

The WHO was first alerted to the outbreak on May 5 after four health workers died within four days. Ten days later, investigators confirmed that the illness was caused by Bundibugyo virus, a form of Ebola.