President of Liberia asks Obama for help to deal with Ebola
The Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf pleaded with U.S. president Obama for assistance to help the country cope with the mounting Ebola crisis.
President Sirleaf said she fears that the worsening crisis, if left to fester without the U.S. help, might draw the country back into the civil chaos that lasted for the previous two decades. She said without the assistance and aid "at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us," The New York Times reported.
Liberia, a West African country founded by freed American slaves, has been dealing with the worst recorded Ebola outbreak in history. Within the last three weeks, Ebola cases in Liberia have been increasing rapidly. Ebola has claimed more than 1,000 lives in the country since the start of the outbreak, which has killed 2,218 people, including the victims from Sierra Leone and Guinea.
President Obama, last week announced that the worsening Ebola crisis is a national security priority for the U.S. in an interview on NBC. A few days later, the Obama administration said that they will provide a 25-bed capacity facility for the treatment of infected healthcare workers. The gesture was considered to be insufficient by the infectious disease specialists who currently work in the field, the Times said. Sirleaf, a couple of days after Obama called the crisis "a national security priority", asked for U.S. assistance. She especially sought U.S military expertise in setting up and operating a treatment center in the nation's capital, Monrovia. Many people, including infectious disease experts, stated that the U.S. military would be the only entity that can manage the operations required to control the outbreak, the Times reported. The other two West African countries intensely battling Ebola, Sierra Leone and Guinea, are currently being assisted by their former colonial masters, Britain and France.
