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President Barack Obama speaks at Nordea Concert
Hall in Tallinn, Estonia. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
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The Obama administration is ramping up its response to
West Africa's Ebola crisis, preparing to assign 3,000 U.S. military personnel
to the afflicted region to supply medical and logistical support to overwhelmed
local health care systems and to boost the number of beds needed to isolate and
treat victims of the epidemic.
GRAPHITTI NEWS gathered President Barack Obama planned to announce the stepped
up effort Tuesday during a visit to the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention in Atlanta amid alarm that the outbreak could spread and that the
deadly virus could mutate into a more easily transmitted disease.
The new U.S. muscle comes after appeals from the
region and from aid organizations for a heightened U.S. role in combatting the
outbreak blamed for more than 2,200 deaths.
Administration officials said Monday that the new
initiatives aim to:
— Train as many as 500 health care workers a week.
— Erect 17 heath care facilities in the region 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.
The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity
to discuss the plans ahead of Obama's announcement, said the cost of the effort
would come from $500 million in overseas contingency operations, such as the
war in Afghanistan, that the Pentagon already has asked Congress to redirect to
carry out humanitarian efforts in Iraq and in West Africa.
The officials said it would take about two weeks to
get U.S. forces on the ground.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations African affairs subcommittee, applauded the new U.S.
commitment. Coons earlier had called for the Obama administration to step up
its role in West Africa.
"This humanitarian intervention should serve as a
firewall against a global security crisis that has the potential to reach
American soil," he said.
Hardest hit by the outbreak are Liberia, Sierra Leone
and Guinea. The virus also has reached Nigeria and Senegal. Ebola is spread
through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients, making doctors
and nurses especially vulnerable to contracting the virus that has no vaccine
or approved treatment.
The U.S. effort will include medics and corpsmen for
treatment and training, engineers to help erect the treatment facilities and
specialists in logistics to assist in patient transportation.
Obama's trip to the CDC comes a day after the United
States also demanded a stepped-up international response to the outbreak. The
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, on Monday called for an
emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, warning that the
potential risk of the virus could "set the countries of West Africa back a
generation."
Power said the meeting Thursday would mark a rare
occasion when the Security Council, which is responsible for threats to
international peace and security, addresses a public health crisis.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was expected to
brief the council along with World Health Organization chief Dr. Margaret Chan
and Dr. David Nabarro, the recently named U.N. coordinator to tackle the
disease, as well as representatives from the affected countries.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest, responding
to criticism that the U.S. needed a more forceful response to the outbreak,
said Monday that Obama has identified the outbreak "as a top national
security priority," worried that it could contribute to political
instability in the region and that left unchecked the virus could transform and
become more contagious.
He said the administration responded "pretty
aggressively" when the outbreak was first reported in March.
"Since that time our assistance has steadily been
ramping up," he said.
The Senate was also weighing in Tuesday with a hearing
to examine the U.S. response. An American missionary doctor who survived the
disease was among those scheduled to testify.
Four Americans have been or are being treated for
Ebola in the U.S. after evacuation from Africa.
The U.S. has spent more than US$100 million responding
to the outbreak and has offered to operate treatment centers for patients.
While at the CDC, Obama also will be briefed about
cases of respiratory illness being reported in the Midwest, the White House
said. Public health officials are monitoring a high number of reported
illnesses associated with human enterovirus 68 in Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and
elsewhere.
After
leaving Atlanta, Obama planned to travel to Florida to visit the headquarters
of U.S. Central Command in Tampa, where he'll meet with military officials
about the U.S. counterterrorism campaign against the Islamic State group.
Central Command overseas U.S. military efforts in the Middle East.
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