"This is likely the greatest peacetime challenge that the United Nations and
its agencies have ever faced," Margaret Chan, the director-general of the
World Health Organization, warned the council this week. "None of us
experienced in containing outbreaks has ever seen, in our lifetimes, an
emergency on this scale, with the degree of suffering, and with this
magnitude of cascading consequences."
Chan said that the current figures indicating more than 5,500 infections
"are vast underestimates." Chan and other U.N. officials said the virus has
devastated the health systems of the hardest-hit countries, Liberia, Sierra
Leone, and Guinea. She noted that the World Bank has warned of a
"potentially catastrophic blow" to those economies.
Speaking at an emergency meeting of the council, David Nabarro, the
senior U.N. system coordinator for Ebola, said the "outbreak is advancing in
an exponential fashion" with the number of infections doubling every three
weeks. "The longer it does that the harder it is to get it under control," he
added. "I estimate that to get ahead of the outbreak the level of response
needs to be about 20 times greater than it is at the moment."
U.S. and U.N. officials said that they haven't given up hope of containing
the virus. Nabarro said that a "massive scale-up" in the "coming weeks"
could "achieve the rapid ending of the outbreak." President Barack Obama
has ordered the deployment of some 3,000 U.S. forces in Liberia to serve as
an "air bridge" to transport doctors, nurses, medical supplies, and clinics
into the hardest-hit areas. In all, the United States has committed more
than $175 million to the effort, a figure U.S. officials said could rise.
Nabarro and Chan both praised the United States and United Kingdom for a
massive infusion of assistance. They also singled out contributions from
Cuba and China, which have sent doctors and other supplies. But they said
that far more needs to be done.
Thursday's Security Council meeting marked only the second time that the
U.N.'s chief security body has declared a public health crisis a threat to
international peace and security. In January 2000, the late Richard C.
Medical aid agencies welcomed the council's new focus on the virus, but
they faulted the U.N., the United States, and other governments for not
responding rapidly enough to the crisis after Ebola struck its first victims in
March.
"Speed is of the essence," the medical aid group Doctors Without Border
said in a statement. "Although dangerously late, ambitious pledges such as
those by the U.S. and the U.K. must be implemented now. We do not have
months or even weeks to wait. Thousands of lives are at stake."
Posted by Thavam