Oxfam calls for troops in Africa as criticism of ‘inadequate’ Ebola response mounts
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Version 0 of 1. Anger is growing over the “inadequate” response to the Ebola epidemic this weekend with the World Health Organisation’s Africa office accused of incompetence and world governments of having failed. Aid charities and the president of the World Bank are among the critics, declaring that the fight against the virus is in danger of being lost. On Saturday Oxfam took the unusual step of calling for troops to be sent to west Africa, along with funding and medical staff, to prevent the Ebola outbreak becoming the “definitive humanitarian disaster of our generation”. It accused countries that did not commit military personnel of “costing lives”. The charity said that there was less than a two-month window to curb the spread of the virus but there remained a crippling shortfall in logistical support. Several African countries have for the last decade been suffering severe shortages of homegrown medics thanks to a “brain drain” to countries such as Britain, which rely on foreign workers. The executive director of frontline medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières, Vickie Hawkins, said national and global health systems had failed. “We are angry that the global response to this outbreak has been so slow and inadequate. “We have been amazed that for months the burden of the response could be carried by one single, private medical organisation, while pleading for more help and watching the situation get worse and worse. When the outbreak is under control, we must reflect on how health systems can have failed quite so badly. But the priority for now must remain the urgent fight against Ebola – we simply cannot afford to fail.” The worst outbreak on record has claimed 4,500 lives, out of 8,914 recorded cases since the start of the year, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The true number is agreed to be higher. There are some 3,700 Ebola orphans. The WHO has said that the worst case scenario was the infection rate reaching 10,000 a week by December but the agency is under heavy fire over a leaked internal report pointing to serious bungling of the epidemic. The WHO, the UN agency designated with coordinating international response to disease outbreaks, missed chances to prevent Ebola from spreading when it was first diagnosed last spring, thanks to incompetent staff, a lack of information and bureaucracy due to “politically motivated appointments”, the report says. “Nearly everyone involved in the response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall,” said the report, obtained by the Associated Press. “A perfect storm was brewing.” The WHO refused to comment on the draft report. Dr Peter Piot, co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, said WHO acted too slowly. “It’s the regional office in Africa that’s the front line,” said Piot. “And they didn’t do anything. That office is really not competent.” On Monday EU foreign ministers are due to meet in Brussels and David Cameron has called for fellow European leaders to double their contribution to the Ebola fighting fund. The UK has committed £125m – the second highest sum after the US although aid agencies say help is still not reaching the ground – as well as 750 troops. Cameron is calling for a €1bn (£800m) EU pledge. President Barack Obama on Saturday urged Americans to avoid hysteria over Ebola, and played down the idea of travel bans from Ebola-ravaged countries in west Africa. “We can’t cut ourselves off from west Africa,” Obama said, adding that it would make it harder to move health workers into the region, and would motivate people trying to get out of the region to evade screening. “Trying to seal off an entire region of the world – if that were even possible – could actually make the situation worse,” he said. Obama said it would take time to fight the disease, warning “before this is over, we may see more isolated cases here in America”. He reminded Americans that only three cases had been diagnosed in the country. But Obama has stepped up the US domestic response, naming Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to vice president Joe Biden, the “Ebola response coordinator” – tackling the problems America has with a health service that is fragmented state by state. But World Bank president Jim Yong Kim warned that officials in many countries were focused too much on their own borders. “I still don’t think that the world has understood what the possible downside risk is – not just to the west African economy, but to the global economy. And we are still losing the battle,” he said. RAPID RESPONSE: THE COUNTRIES THAT GOT IT RIGHT NIGERIA In July, Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American, collapsed at Lagos airport. By the time medics realised he had Ebola, 11 people had been infected, four of whom died. A Nigerian task force tracked down and monitored 894 people thought to be at risk, and officials visited 26,000 households. After just 19 confirmed cases and eight deaths, Nigeria is on track to get the all-clear from the WHO. DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO An Ebola outbreak began in August, unconnected to the west African epidemic, with 71 cases and 49 deaths to date. The country is credited with mounting an effective response: the ministry of health was on the ground and monitoring the situation within a week of the first death, but it had the advantage that the outbreak occurred in an isolated village, from which it could not easily spread to other communities. The DRC has seen six outbreaks of Ebola since the virus was first identified there in 1976. SENEGAL A man who entered the country from Guinea, where he’d had direct contact with an Ebola patient, has been the country’s only confirmed case. Last Friday, declaring Senegal officially free of the Ebola virus, the WHO congratulated the government on its rapid response and diligence, which had prevented a wider outbreak from occurring. |