More than 6,000 miles from Colorado, Ebola is raging in several countries in Africa. More than 2,600 people have died and another 5,000 have been infected in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia -- countries that are ill-equipped to deal with the virus.
"This is ground zero, if you will, the country where most of the deaths have occurred," said Tim Callaghan, who is heading up the Ebola Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) with USAID, the government agency which handles international disasters.
MONROVIA, Liberia — U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah announced nearly $142 million in humanitarian projects and grants to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Shah made the announcement after meeting with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia in the capital city of Monrovia. It was the first stop in a week-long trip for Shah to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Senegal to meet with national and local officials, aid organizations, and staff involved in the international response to the Ebola outbreak. The announcement brings total U.S. humanitarian assistance for the Ebola crisis to more than $258 million.
West Africa faces the largest Ebola epidemic in history. Every day, in extreme heat and humidity, health care workers are performing life-saving tasks to stop the spread of the virus. They face many obstacles in providing timely care to patients—heat stress caused by Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), lengthy infection control measures that leave no room for error, and communities reluctant to seek care are just a few.
President Obama has declared it a top national security priority,
“Faced with this outbreak, the world is looking to us, the United States, and it’s a responsibility that we embrace. We’re prepared to take leadership on this to provide the kinds of capabilities that only America has, and to mobilize the world in ways that only America can do. That’s what we’re doing as we speak.”
