Barack Obama Says US Military to Help Ebola Effort

/barack-obama-says-us-military-to-help-e

  • Ebola : We Could Have Stopped This - by Laurie Garrett
    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/05/we_could_have_stopped_this_ebola_virus_world_health_organization

    Public health officials knew Ebola was coming. They know how to defeat it. But they’re blowing it anyway.

    La réponse est très loin du compte :

    To understand the scale of response the world must mount in order to stop Ebola’s march across Africa (and perhaps other continents), the world community needs to immediately consider the humanitarian efforts following the 2004 tsunami and its devastation of Aceh, Indonesia.

    L’OMS est en vrac :

    the sole major international responder, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), pleaded for help and warned repeatedly that the virus was spreading out of control. The WHO was all but AWOL, its miniscule epidemic-response department slashed to smithereens by three years of budget cuts, monitoring the epidemic’s relentless growth but taking little real action.

    et ça fait des années qu’elle est maltraitée et instrumentalisée :

    The neglectful status of the WHO was, horribly, by design. Its governing body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), in which nearly every nation on Earth is a voting member, has declined to increase country WHO dues for more than a quarter-century. Worse, following the 2008 financial crisis, most of the extrabudgetary special support that the WHO relied upon — funds from rich countries that more than doubled the agency’s financing — disappeared as once-wealthy governments turned away from philanthropy

    le facteur épidémique (R0) s’accroît :

    Today in Liberia, the virus is spreading so rapidly that no RO has been computed. Back in the spring, however, when matters were conceivably controllable, Liberia’s then-small rural outbreak was 1.59.

    Les stats sous-évaluent la réalité :

    WHO’s official case reports, which solely reflect lab-confirmed patients that have sought care in medical facilities, under-represents the true toll by at least half

    Le reste de l’article est un appel à l’armée américaine qui est la seule (selon l’auteure) à pouvoir intervenir à cette échelle de besoins et de manière décisive :

    Washington officials say off the record that options for U.S. military assistance are under consideration, and may be announced in a few days.

    Mais ça va pas être facile :

    Ebola responses in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and possibly Nigeria each need a “national force/brigade that tells people, ’this is what you do and what you do not,’ and that does surveillance — this brigade has to have the trust of the people.”

    #santé #intervention #OMS #ebola #MSF #armée

    • [2 septembre] le discours de Joanne Liu, la présidente internationale de MSF aux Nations unies :

      MSF International President United Nations Special Briefing on Ebola | Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International
      http://www.msf.org/article/msf-international-president-united-nations-special-briefing-ebola

      To curb the epidemic, it is imperative that States immediately deploy civilian and military assets with expertise in biohazard containment. I call upon you to dispatch your disaster response teams, backed by the full weight of your logistical capabilities. This should be done in close collaboration with the affected countries.

      Without this deployment, we will never get the epidemic under control.

      The following must be prioritized:

      – Scaling up isolation centers;
      – Deploying mobile laboratories to improve diagnostic capabilities;
      – Establishing dedicated air bridges to move personnel and equipment to and within West Africa;
      – Building a regional network of field hospitals to treat suspected or infected medical personnel.

    • Can The U.S. Military Turn The Tide In The Ebola Outbreak? : Goats and Soda : NPR
      http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/09/11/347666891/can-the-u-s-military-turn-the-tide-in-the-ebola-outbreak

      the Pentagon’s commitment seems modest in the wake of Obama’s comments. It plans to supply Liberia with a 25-bed field hospital — but no medical staff. (...)

      “Our deployable medical capabilities are generally trauma medicine, treating people who suffer wounds in combat and things of that nature,” says Michael Lumpkin, the assistant secretary of defense in charge of Ebola response. “That’s not necessarily what they’re dealing with there.”

      And a large number of troops are dispatched, that could make things worse. (...)

      Foreign troops would not be there to enforce quarantines. But just their presence has the potential to destabilize, says Julie Fischer, a public health expert at George Washington University.

    • [Peter Piot,] Scientist who identified Ebola virus calls for ’quasi-military intervention’ | Society | The Guardian
      http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/11/scientist-identified-ebola-quasi-military-intervention-peter-piot

      The microbiologist who helped identify the Ebola virus in 1976 has urged David Cameron to support a “quasi-military intervention” to stop the current epidemic, which is spreading unchecked in west Africa.

      Professor Peter Piot, the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the outbreak was now so bad that a UN peacekeeping force ought to be mobilised in Sierra Leone and Liberia with huge donations of beds, ambulances and trucks as well as an army of clinicians, doctors and nurses.