Citing security threat, Obama expands U.S. role fighting Ebola (Posted for my fellow BOGsters) [View all]

By Jeff Mason and James Harding Giahyue - Sep 16, 2014


U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, September 16, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing

ATLANTA/MONROVIA (Reuters) -

...Obama's plan calls for sending 3,000 troops, including engineers and medical personnel; establishing a regional command and control center in Liberia's capital, Monrovia, commanded by Major General Darryl Williams, who arrived there on Tuesday; and forming a staging area in Senegal to help distribute personnel and aid on the ground. It also calls for building 17 treatment centers with 100 beds each; placing U.S. 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. 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 "spiraling out of control" and "people are literally dying in the streets..."

Obama 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," Obama added...

Liberians hailed the word that U.S. troops were coming, recalling a military operation in 2003 that helped stabilize the country during a civil war. "This is welcome news. This is what we expected from the U.S. a long time ago," Anthony Mulbah, a student at the University of Monrovia, said in the dilapidated oceanfront capital. "The U.S. remains a strong partner to Liberia." In Liberia, a shortage of space in clinics for isolating victims means patients are being turned away, then infecting others. Ebola spreads rapidly, causes fever and uncontrolled bleeding...

The U.S. intervention comes as the pace of cash and emergency supplies dispatched to the region accelerates.
Before Tuesday, Washington had sent about 100 health officials and committed some $175 million in aid. Other nations, including Cuba, China, France and Britain; have pledged medical workers, health centers and other forms of support. Critics, including regional leaders, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Peter Piot, one of the scientists who discovered Ebola in 1976; have said international efforts so far have fallen woefully short...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/16/us-health-ebola-obama-idUSKBN0HB08S20140916

Comments on this piece when cited on another website ranged from 'Good job, Obama'; to conservatives saying to let them all die, Obama will bring the infected troops home to kill us like the Spanish flu; to factual rebuttals on every bit of conservative error and hysteria. I learned a lot, was impressed by the rebuttals. Good work!