President Obama is expected to announce the assigning of up to
3,000 military personnel to combat the Ebola virus in West Africa
Tuesday, while the Pentagon has requested Congress to divert $500
million in overseas contingency funds in support of the effort.
Obama will announce the stepped-up offensive against the Ebola
outbreak, which has killed more than 2,200 people in five West African
countries, in an appearance at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention in Atlanta.
Administration officials said that the U.S. would help to provide
medical and logistical support to overwhelmed local health care systems
and to boost the number of beds needed to isolate and treat victims of
the epidemic.
The new initiatives include training as many as 500 health care
workers a week; erecting 17 heath care facilities with approximately 100
beds each; setting up a joint command headquartered in Monrovia,
Liberia, to coordinate between U.S. and international relief efforts;
providing home health care kits to hundreds of thousands of households,
including 50,000 that the U.S. Agency for International Development will
deliver to Liberia this week; and carrying out a home- and
community-based campaign to train local populations on how to handle
exposed patients.
The fight against Ebola is considered, in part, a national security
issue because the disease threatens fragile governments in Africa and
could lead to more safe havens for terrorists. The request falls under
the jurisdiction of the Pentagon because the military has the capacity
to set up quarantine camps.
Sources told Fox News on Monday that the request is expected to be
discussed Tuesday at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen.
Martin Dempsey. But the sources said they believe the requested amount
is a lot to reprogram.
Officials told the Associated Press that it would take about two
weeks for U.S. forces to get on the ground. The U.S. effort will include
medics and corpsmen for treatment and training, engineers to help erect
the treatment facilities and specialists in logistics to assist in
patient transportation.
The Obama administration’s decision to enlist the Defense Department
in responding to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has raised concerns
that the task is pulling the already-stretched military away from other
missions, including vital counter-terrorism operations.
According to a senior military official, Dempsey said at a recent
meeting: "The Department of Defense's number one priority is combating
Ebola."
However, a Defense Department source told Fox News last week that alarms had been raised about the decision.
“We don’t need to be taking planners away from the CT
[counterterrorism] mission, and that is what is going on,” the Defense
Department source said.
USAID and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are already involved.
The death toll in the Ebola outbreak is expected to reach 10,000
before six months from now, and some estimates believe it will reach
500,000 before it’s over. Hardest hit by the outbreak are Liberia,
Sierra Leone and Guinea. The virus also has reached Nigeria and Senegal.
Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick
patients, making doctors and nurses especially vulnerable to contracting
the virus that has no vaccine or approved treatment.
Four Americans, including three doctors, have been or are being treated for the virus in the U.S.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the senior Republican on the Senate's
health committee, said Monday that the U.S. must take the Ebola threat
as seriously as it does the Islamic State terrorist group. He added that
he would support the Obama administration's request for $30 million for
the CDC and $58 million for the Biomedical Advanced Research and
Development Authority in an upcoming bill.
“This is an instance where we should be running toward the burning
flames with our fireproof suits on," Alexander said in a statement.
"This is an emergency. We need to recognize it, and we need to find and
work with other countries in the world that recognize it.”
On Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power
called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on
Thursday, warning that the potential risk of the virus could "set the
countries of West Africa back a generation."
Power said the meeting Thursday would mark a rare occasion when the
Security Council, which is responsible for threats to international
peace and security, addresses a public health crisis.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was expected to brief the council
along with World Health Organization chief Dr. Margaret Chan and Dr.
David Nabarro, the recently named U.N. coordinator to tackle the
disease, as well as representatives from the affected countries.
Fox News' Jennifer Griffin, Justin Fischel, Lucas Tomlinson, and
Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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