US President Barack Obama on Tuesday issued a global call to action to fight West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, warning the deadly outbreak was unprecedented and “spiraling out of control,” threatening hundreds of thousands of people.
Speaking as he unveiled a major new US initiative which will see 3,000 US military personnel deployed to West Africa to combat the crisis, Obama said the outbreak was spreading “exponentially.”
“Here’s the hard truth. In West Africa, Ebola is now an epidemic of the likes that we have not seen before,” Obama said.
Photo: AFP
“It’s spiraling out of control. It is getting worse. It’s spreading faster and exponentially. Today, thousands of people in West Africa are infected. That number could rapidly grow to tens of thousands,” he said. “And if the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected, with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us.”
The US will also set up a command and control center in the capital of Liberia, the hardest-hit country, build new treatment centers and train health workers.
However, the precise timing on deployment was still unclear.
“No deployment in the coming days. The troops have to be properly trained and equipped,” a Pentagon official said privately.
Among the US soldiers sent to West Africa will be doctors and also engineers to set up the field hospitals, the official said.
The US Department of Defense planned yesterday to ask to have reprogrammed “an additional US$500 million in Fiscal Year 2014 Overseas Contingency Operations [OCO] funds to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to fight Ebola,” an administration official said.
This is separate from the funds already put toward the effort, including the US$175 million already dedicated, and the US$88 million requested through a continuing resolution.
The UN Security Council is poised to adopt a resolution today exhorting countries to provide more field hospitals and urgent aid to the crisis-stricken region.
Likely passage of the resolution marks only the third time that the Security Council will vote on a public health crisis after resolutions on AIDS in 2000 and 2011.
Australia yesterday announced it will immediately provide an additional A$7 million (US$6.4 million) to help the international response.
The funds include A$2 million requested by Britain to help it deliver medical services in Sierra Leone, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said, adding that another A$2.5 million will go to the WHO’s response, and A$2.5 million will be given to Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Additional reporting by AP
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