US president Barack Obama has called West Africa's deadly Ebola outbreak a looming threat to global security and has 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,” Mr Obama said at the Atlanta headquarters of the US Centres 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 Organization (WHO), 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.
Other nations, including Cuba, China, France and Britain; have also pledged medical workers, health centres and other forms of support.
Mr Obama's plan calls for sending 3,000 troops, including engineers and medical personnel; establishing a regional command and control centre in Liberia's capital, Monrovia, 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.
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.
Mr 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 “spiralling 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. Amid concern about infections, Obama said the "safety of our personnel will remain a top priority." He also said the "chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low."
He said that if the outbreak is not stopped now, hundreds of thousands of people may become infected, “with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us.”
“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, if people panic. That has profound effects on all of us, even if we are not directly contracting the disease,” Mr Obama added.
A senior WHO official said the Ebola outbreak requires a much faster response to limit its spread to tens of thousands of cases. “We don’t know where the numbers are going on this,” WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward told a news conference in Geneva, calling the crisis “unparalleled in modern times.”
The spread of ebola has crippled weak health systems, infecting hundreds of local staff in a region chronically short of doctors. The WHO has said that 500 to 600 more foreign experts and at least 10,000 more local health workers are needed.
"It is not enough to provide protective clothing when you don't have the people who will wear them," Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama said during a visit to Sierra Leone.
Reuters