jerrytz
JF-Expert Member
- Oct 10, 2012
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Barack Obama
Facing an unprecedented and out-of-control Ebola epidemic in West Africa, President Obama announced an equally unprecedented response Tuesday - dispatching 3,000 U.S. troops to the region with health care and aid workers in an effort to contain the deadly virus.
The expanded, $763 million, military-led plan will include a new regional U.S. base in Liberia; portable hospitals, laboratories and other medical facilities; and increased training for first responders and other medical officials throughout West Africa.
It''s the largest response to an international epidemic in U.S. history, Obama said after meeting with the nation's top public health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Will it be enough?
"There is no guarantee of success, but there would be a guarantee of failure if Obama hadn't announced this plan," said Daniel Lucey, an adjunct professor of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University Medical Center.
"This is urban Ebola," said Lucey, a doctor who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone for three weeks in August. "It's unprecedented, and it's uncontrolled."
Obama acknowledged as much. "In West Africa, Ebola is now an epidemic of the likes that we have not seen before. It's spiraling out of control. It is getting worse. It's spreading faster and exponentially," he said.
The president said the solution is within grasp.
"The world knows how to fight this disease," Obama said. "It's not a mystery. We know the science. We know how to prevent it from spreading. We know how to care for those who contract it. We know that if we take the proper steps, we can save lives. But we have to act fast. We can't dawdle on this one."
Obama said Army Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams will lead the African effort. He's already arrived in Liberia, where he will set up a regional command center in the capital, Monrovia. His mission is to provide engineering and logistical help, establishing an "air bridge" into Africa to more quickly get medical supplies and aid workers to the continent.
"Some people have asked why the military should be involved," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., at a Senate hearing. "They have to be involved if we want to deal with the problem. There's no way for the doctors and nurses and health care workers to deal with it" without such help, he said.
The mission, dubbed Operation United Assistance, is modeled after the U.S. response to the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, when 20,000 U.S. troops helped get aid into the country. U.S. troops will not provide "direct medical care," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
That will be the job of health care providers. More than 100 experts from the CDC are in Africa, where they will help train 500 new health workers every week.
"This new response, we think, is spot on for what's needed," said Bruce Johnson, president of SIM USA, a Christian missionary group that runs the ELWA Ebola treatment center in Monrovia. He said other nations must also step up. "Now we need about triple this from the rest of the world community to fight this wildfire of Ebola."
Infectious disease experts said the world is racing against time. Infections are doubling at the rate of about once every three weeks, and the longer Ebola rages out of control the more likely it could spread to other continents or - in a nightmare scenario - mutate to become airborne. The virus spreads only through direct contact with bodily fluids.
"The window of opportunity to contain this outbreak is closing," said Joanne Liu, president of Doctors Without Borders, at a United Nations briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. "We need more countries to stand up, we need greater deployment, and we need it now."
She said sick people are banging on the doors of the group's Ebola hospitals in Monrovia, desperate for a safe place where they won't spread the disease to their families. "Tragically, our teams must turn them away," she said.
As of Tuesday, the World Health Organization reported 4,963 confirmed cases and 2,453 deaths in the hardest-hit nations of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
If the virus keeps spreading at the current rate, "there simply aren't going to be enough beds," said Ken Isaacs of Samaritan's Purse, a missionary group that has run an Ebola treatment center in Monrovia.
His organization hopes to train people to treat family members with Ebola at home. "We ran Ebola treatment centers for two months, and we were totally overwhelmed," Isaacs said. "Isolating people in their homes and training the family members to protect themselves is the way we can influence disease transmission."
The United States hopes to prevent people from contracting the virus in the first place, through better hygiene.
Helped by $9 million from the Paul Allen Family Foundation, the U.S. Agency for International Development will provide 400,000 "household protection kits" to be distributed by local volunteers. The kit includes a bucket, refuse bags, cleaning supplies, four surgical gowns, 25 surgical masks, six bars of soap, 100 latex gloves, chlorine and an information leaflet.
Support for the president's Ebola direction enjoyed rare bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. "The president's absolutely right," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "And no one's better equipped to do something like this than our military."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced his intention to support the funding bill that would include $88 million in additional Ebola funds. "What the administration is doing is correct," he said.
Source: usatoday
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/09/16/obama-ebola-africa-how-effective-will-it-be/15736455/
