WASHINGTON, United States (AFP)—United States (US) Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that the World Health Organization, the UN body from which President Donald Trump pulled out, was late in identifying a deadly outbreak of Ebola.

Asked by reporters how the United States would respond to the virus outbreak, Rubio said: “The lead is obviously going to be CDC (the Centers for Disease Control) and the World Health Organization, which was a little late to identify this thing unfortunately.”

Rubio said that the United States, which has committed around $13 million in assistance after sweeping aid cuts last year, was hoping to open around 50 clinics to treat Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“It’s a little tough to get to because it’s in a rural area… and hard-to-get-to place in a war-torn country, unfortunately,” Rubio said.

“We’re going to lean into that pretty heavy.”

Trump in one of his first acts on returning to office last year set in motion a US withdrawal from the WHO, which he attacked bitterly over its response to Covid.

The global pandemic heavily affected his first administration in the months before he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

The WHO earlier Tuesday said that it was concerned about the “scale and speed” of the Ebola outbreak that has killed an estimated 131 people in DR Congo.