With people dying in the streets of the Liberian capital, President Barack Obama has at last ramped up the U.S. response to the worst outbreak ever of the Ebola virus in West Africa. The fresh surge of support announced Tuesday
With people dying in the streets of the Liberian capital, President Barack Obama has at last ramped up the U.S. response to the worst outbreak ever of the Ebola virus in West Africa. The fresh surge of support announced Tuesday represents a welcome change of course. No one knows if the package outlined by Obama at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be sufficient, but at least the United States has started to act like the world’s indispensable nation.
Since not enough treatment beds and health care workers were available in recent months, more infections and deaths are coming. In four nations, the virus has infected at least 4,985 people and killed 2,461, half within the past three weeks. Tens of thousands of people are at risk of death from an illness for which there is no vaccine or cure. Isolation and containment remain the only hope. The World Health Organization says the cost will now top $1 billion.
Obama promised to deploy up to 3,000 troops, build 17 treatment centers each with 100 beds, train thousands of health care workers and provide air logistics, protective gear, health kits and medical experts. Most important, the United States will set up a command-and-control structure, led by a U.S. Army general, to bring direction to the regional effort. The fragile governments of West Africa have crumpled in the face of the outbreak, especially Liberia, unable to muster enough doctors, coax health care workers to remain on the job or reassure panicked populations. “This health emergency threatens civil order,” declared Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in a letter to Obama last week.
In February, the United States and 28 other countries, as well as the WHO, announced the Global Health Security Agenda, a smart mixture of plans and policies intended to stop the kind of public health catastrophe that has now occurred. The agenda’s goals were “preventing and reducing the likelihood of outbreaks,” “detecting threats early” and “rapid, effective response.” Doctors Without Borders rang the alarm about Ebola in March. What happened? Why didn’t Obama and his team of seasoned public health officials follow their own agenda? The U.S. response in the early months was not zero but nowhere near enough given the size of the disaster.
What we are witnessing underscores an essential truth often overlooked: National security threats come not only from malevolent countries or groups but also lie in zoonosis, the process of disease transmission from animals to humans. The examples of SARS, the swine flu pandemic, the MERS coronavirus and now Ebola should leave little doubt that prevention, surveillance, detection and rapid response to infectious disease must be taken more seriously than in the past. The tardy response to Ebola ought to prompt deep soul-searching about how not to let it happen again.
