Has Obama Created the Plan that will Beat Ebola?

       Yesterday, US President Barack Obama announced his $500 million plan to beat out Ebola.  The President will send 3,000 military personnel to West Africa for what will be a very difficult initiative that will include training of health care workers.  Obama says that the United States is ready to take the leadership role in tackling the Ebola outbreak, he claims that it is "Spiralling out of control".  The US will also be erecting new treatment and isolation facilities, training healthcare workers and boosting logistic support in the region.  "Ebola is now an epidemic, it's getting worse, however it will continue to get worse before the situation improves" Obama went on to say in his meeting with top US public health officials.  In recent weeks Obama has faced criticism for not doing more to combat the outbreak.  Last week the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the virus has killed over 2,400 people out of the 2,784 cases in Western African nations.  

Obama presents his plan to the Centre for Disease
Control and Prevention

       As for the US, a military control centre will be established in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia to coordinate the efforts of the US and other partnering nations.  The strategic plan for combating Ebola focuses on training, a new training site will be established where US medical personnel will be teaching approximately 500 healthcare workers per week over the next six months on how to provide care to Ebola patients.  The WHO says that the hardest countries are Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.  They estimate that the countries need three to four times the current number of medical and health workers that are currently present.  UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commented that the virus has gone beyond health issues but has also had great effects on social and economic dimensions, and in the long term could even affect the stability of the region.  

        As the number of Ebola cases could start doubling every three weeks in  Western Africa, I believe that this is a huge priority for health organizations at the moment.  I think that the United States is doing they're part by providing workers and funding.  It is only an aggressive attack, as such the US has proposed, that will combat the epidemic.  If the disease is contained within the next few weeks, the disease will spread to other Western African nations and possibly abroad.  While it is true that the health care system in these nations are ill-equipped to deal with such issues, I do not believe that at this moment there are any countries that are prepared.  This is why I think that the best solution to the disease is to move abroad to Africa and localize it rather than just combating the virus once it makes it across the world as it inevitably will if not taken care of.  I believe that the best medicine is preventative medicine, therefore it is best to take extreme action to combat Ebola in Africa to prevent it from spreading across the globe. 

 William Deo

Adapted from:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/09/obama-announce-plan-beat-ebola-201491664237417853.html