MONROVIA, liberia — People critically ill with Ebola languishing in an ambulance for hours as paramedics seek a place for them. Treatment centers filling up as soon as they are opened. The situation is so dire in Liberia that its president welcomed a U.S. pledge to send troops and treatment centers, but said much more needs to be done.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Wednesday urged the world community to redouble efforts to battle the disease, which could spread to other countries after hitting five West African nations.
“Our American partners realize Liberia cannot defeat Ebola alone,” Sirleaf said in a written statement. “We hope this decision by the United States will spur the rest of the international community into action. … The entire community of nations has a stake in ending this crisis.”
Even as promises of aid came, the risks of such help were underscored by yet another international health care worker who has fallen ill while trying to help sick patients in Liberia. Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, said the female French employee would be evacuated to a special treatment center in France after being placed into isolation Tuesday.
At least seven international health care and aid workers have been taken abroad for treatment, and concerns over doctor infections have made it difficult to recruit the foreign help needed to combat the epidemic.
President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he will order 3,000 U.S. military personnel to West Africa. The U.S. also plans on delivering 17 treatment centers with 100 beds each to Liberia. Ebola is thought to have killed at least 2,400 people in the largest outbreak ever and sickened nearly 5,000.
Also Wednesday, Australia announced that it will provide another $6.4 million to the fight, while Germany is considering providing a mobile hospital and transport planes.
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Scientist: Ebola unlikely to become airborne • WASHINGTON — It’s incredibly unlikely that Ebola would mutate to spread through the air, and the best way to make sure it doesn’t is to stop the epidemic, a top government scientist told concerned lawmakers Wednesday.
“A virus that doesn’t replicate, doesn’t mutate,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health to a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee.
Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients. Fauci said U.S. researchers are monitoring for mutations in the virus.
But considering all the dire things to worry about with the epidemic in West Africa, that mutation concern is not “something I would put at the very top of the radar screen,” said Fauci, head of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The Associated Press
