President Barack Obama, in a sober assessment of international efforts to stem a Ebola outbreak, on Thursday warned a high-level United Nations gathering that there is a “significant gap” between what has been offered to stem the health crisis in West Africa and what is needed.
The leaders of the hardest-hit nations also appealed for more help, with the president of Sierra Leone calling the Ebola virus “worse than terrorism.”
The emergency U.N. session on Ebola reflected the deep concern about an outbreak that has so far killed nearly 3,000 people. U.S. health officials have warned that the number of infected people could explode to at least 1.4 million by mid-January, although they have cautioned that the totals could peak well below that if efforts to control the outbreak are ramped up. Despite the grim warnings, Obama said international aid simply is not flowing into West Africa fast enough.
“The outbreak is such where at this point, more people will die,” Obama said as he closed out three days of diplomacy at the annual gathering of the U.N. General Assembly. “So this is not one where there should be a lot of wrangling and people waiting to see who else is doing what. Everybody has got to move fast in order for us to make a difference.”
On Thursday, top lawmakers in Congress approved the use of leftover Afghanistan war money to begin funding Obama’s $1 billion request to help fight the outbreak.
Obama has come under criticism from some in West Africa for a slow response to the outbreak. He outlined a more robust plan last week, announcing that the U.S. would dispatch 3,000 U.S. service members to Liberia to set up facilities and form training teams to help with the response. The Pentagon mission will involve airlifting personnel, medical supplies and equipment, such as tents to house Ebola victims and isolate people exposed to the virus.
The Ebola outbreak has hit Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea the hardest, leaving aid groups in the region to scramble desperately for resources.
“Our 150-bed facility in Monrovia opens for just 30 minutes each morning. Only a few people are admitted, to fill beds made empty by those who died overnight,” Doctors Without Borders president Joanne Liu said at the U.N. meeting.
As leaders from West Africa appealed for more help from the international community, they also cast the outbreak as far more than a health crisis.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, addressing the conference via video, cited a “precipitous decline in economic activity” as well as the “loss of income and jobs” for people in her country.
President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, who also spoke on a video feed, said his country was facing “life and death challenges” that were worse than the threat of terrorism. Koroma took the dramatic step Thursday of sealing off districts where more than 1 million live in order to try to contain the outbreak.
