ATLANTA/MONROVIA (Reuters) – President Barack Obama yesterday called West Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak a looming threat to global security and announced a major expansion of the US role in trying to halt its spread, including deployment of 3,000 troops to the region.
“The reality is that this epidemic is going to get worse before it gets better,” Obama said at the Atlanta headquarters of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“But, right now, the world still has an opportunity to save countless lives. Right now, the world has the responsibility to act, to step up and to do more. The United States of America intends to do more,” he added.
The US plan, a dramatic expansion of Washington’s initial response last week, won praise from the UN World Health Organisation, aid workers and officials in West Africa. Experts said it was still not enough to contain the epidemic, which is rapidly spreading and has caused already-weak local public health systems to buckle under the strain of fighting it.
US officials said the focus of the military deployment would be Liberia, a nation founded by freed American slaves that is the hardest hit of the countries affected by the crisis.
Obama’s plan calls for sending 3,000 troops, including engineers and medical personnel; establishing a regional command and control center in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, commanded by Major General Darryl Williams, who arrived there on Tuesday; and forming a staging area in Senegal to help distribute personnel and aid on the ground.
It also calls for building 17 treatment centres with 100 beds each; placing US Public Health Service personnel in new field hospitals in Liberia; training thousands of healthcare workers for six months or longer; and creating an “air bridge” to get health workers and medical supplies into West Africa more quickly.
Late yesterday, an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Defense Department would ask Congress to approve another $500 million in funds to be reallocated from fiscal 2014 to help cover the mission’s costs.
Added to the $500 billion sought earlier to be moved from the previous fiscal year for Ebola and fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq, up to $1 billion would be available to be spent on the Ebola response.
This was separate from $175 million already dedicated to the effort, and $88 million being sought in Congress this week as a stopgap measure, the official noted.
The worst Ebola outbreak since the disease was identified in 1976 has already killed nearly 2,500 people and is threatening to spread elsewhere in Africa.
Obama said “the world is looking to us” to take the lead against Ebola, but urged other nations also to take action because the epidemic is “spiraling out of control” and “people are literally dying in the streets.”
The White House said the troops will not be responsible for direct patient care.
