President Obama announces $500 million humanitarian assistance to combat Liberia's Ebola epidemic. Photocredit: NBC News
Jim Kuhnhenn, of the Associated Press reports
Obama To Send 3,000 Military Forces To Fight Ebola In West Africa. Speaking at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention President Obama announced a major U.S. led program of humanitarian assistance to be managed by a command and control center set up in Liberia by the U.S. military of the sort I've been recommending for the last several months.
This is an impressive and excellent response which I support 100%.
The military response is part of a heightened U.S. role that will include erecting new treatment and isolation facilities, training health care workers and increasing communications and transportation support, officials said.
Nearly 5,000 people have become ill from Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal since it was first recognized in March. WHO says it anticipates that figure could rise to more than 20,000. At least 2,400 people have died, with Liberia bearing the brunt.
With the addition of military personnel, administration officials said that the new U.S. initiatives aim to:
—Train as many as 500 health care workers a week.
—Erect 17 heath care facilities in Liberia of 100 beds each.
—Set up a joint command headquartered in Monrovia, Liberia, to coordinate between U.S. and international relief efforts.
—Provide home health care kits to hundreds of thousands of households, including 50,000 that the U.S. Agency for International Development will deliver to Liberia this week.
—Carry out a home- and community-based campaign to train local populations on how to handle exposed patients.
1:49 PM PT: Maggie Fox of NBC News writes Battlefield Ebola: Obama Reveals Military Plan for Outbreak, that will involve more than $500 million of funding.
The United States is setting up a military command center to fight the "out of control" Ebola epidemic in West Africa, President Barack Obama said Tuesday. An Army major-general is already in place to direct a major U.S. push to build clinics, distribute supplies and train health care workers, Obama said while visiting the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Senior administration officials say it’ll involve up to 3,000 troops and more than $500 million in spending.
"Hospitals, clinics and the few treatment centers that do exist are completely overwhelmed," Obama said. "People are literally dying in the streets," he added. "It's spiralling out of control." ... "We are prepared to take leadership on this."
The World Health Organization says 5,000 people have been infected and half have died and say thousands more are doomed. "If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected," Obama said.
"Faced with this outbreak, the world is looking to the United States and it is a responsibility we are prepared to embrace. We are prepared to take leadership on this," he added. "This is an epidemic that is not just a threat to regional security, it’s a potential threat to global security if these countries break down, if their economies break down and people panic."
Obama said Major General Darrell Williams, a seasoned logistics expert, had already landed in Liberia to lead the effort.
"Today the United States is doing even more but this is a global threat and it has to have a global reponse," Obama said. "More nations need to contribute experienced personnel. They need to deliver what they plegde quickly." He said charities and philanthropies had already done much of the work and he said more would be needed.