US President Barack Obama today announced he will send 3,000 troops to help tackle Ebola as part of a renewed effort to stop the spread of the deadly disease.
His response to the crisis also includes plans to train thousands of health care workers, establish a military control centre for coordination and build 17 treatment centres with a goal of 1,700 beds in west Africa.
It came as new figures by the World Health Organization showed Ebola has killed more than 2,500 people while another 5,000 have been infected...MORE..
Assistant director-general Bruce Aylward said it needs foreign medical teams with 500-600 experts as well as at least 10,000 local health workers, numbers that may rise if the number of cases increases.
"The gravity is the situation is difficult to get across,” said Mr Aylward, who added a faster response was needed to keep the numbers infected within the "tens of thousands."
The response coalition will be led by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.
"We must prevent the collapse of the health systems in the affected countries," said Valerie Amos, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency.
"The food security situation in some parts of the affected countries is of grave concern.”
The U.S. government also hopes to send 400,000 treatment kits with sanitiser and other items to at-risk home.
Public health campaigns will be broadcast through existing networks in the countries most affected by the virus: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Officials hope a more coordinated logistical situation on the ground, put in place by the United States, will encourage other nations to step up their own efforts in fighting Ebola, which experts worry could spread even more rapidly if more isn’t done now to contain it.
“We’ve seen dozens of cases turn into hundreds, then hundreds turn into thousands,” one U.S. administration official said.
“If we do not arrest that growth, and don’t arrest that growth now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of cases.”
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