Doctors Without Borders calls for military deployments in countries battling Ebola
The non-profit organization known as Doctors Without Borders and has been on the front lines of the current Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa has issued its strongest call yet for immediate and dramatic steps to be taken to contain the spread of the disease.
The Guardian reports that the warning was made by Joanne Liu, the head of the organization, in remarks to the United Nations. Liu told the U.N. that no amount of progress on vaccines and treatments would be able to slow the spread of the disease without other more direct actions.
Liu called on members of the U.N. to deploy military and civilian assets with training in biohazard management and disaster response. She said that without such action taken in unison by the U.N. and those nations battling the Ebola virus, there was no hope of stopping or containing the deadly disease's rapid spread, according to The Guardian.
To justify this call to action, Liu pointed out that there are riots in quarantine zones and health workers are dying at alarming rates. Around one tenth of the people who have died in the outbreak were medical personnel. She also noted that isolation wards are practically bursting at the seams trying to accommodate all the possible cases.
Surely adding to the alarm is the fact that a U.N. report also recently warned that the food and cash crop harvests West Africa may spoil before they can be collected. This is because quarantines have severely limited the movement of people and goods throughout the afflicted countries. This has also led to sharp increases in the price of food and other goods.
Liu also noted that the Ebola crisis has strained the health systems of those countries fighting the disease and this has led to people dying of treatable diseases.
The Guardian reports that Liu called for military intervention so that air transport would be readily and easily accessible for medical personnel. Military intervention would also allow for the establishment of field hospitals and more isolation centers to provide care.
