MSF: World 'Losing the Battle' to Contain Ebola
International medical agency Medecins Sans Frontieres said Tuesday the world was "losing the battle" to contain Ebola and called for a global biological disaster response to get aid and personnel to west Africa.
"Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it. Leaders are failing to come to grips with this transnational threat," MSF international president Joanne Liu told a U.N. briefing in New York.
"The (World Health Organization) announcement on August 8 that the epidemic constituted a 'public health emergency of international concern' has not led to decisive action, and states have essentially joined a global coalition of inaction."
Liu called for the international community to fund more beds for a regional network of field hospitals, dispatch trained personnel and deploy mobile laboratories across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
At the same meeting on Ebola for U.N. member states, the head of the World Health Organization Margaret Chan concurred, saying, "Ebola has become a global threat that requires urgent global response."
"The outbreak will get worse before its gets better," she said, adding that it "can and will be controlled. We know what is needed and how to do it."
Dr. David Nabarro, the U.N. coordinator for the Ebola crisis, said "it is everybody's problem, we are all accountable and we are all responsible."
U.N. Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson said the international community needed to step up its efforts to bolster strained medical systems in the affected countries.
"We are faced with severe strains on our own staff working in these difficult conditions," he said.
Source: Agence France Presse
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