US and UK troops to fight Ebola

[DrLeftover]

8 Sept

The United States and Britain are sending troops and equipment to West Africa to help curb the spread of Ebola, officials said Monday, as the World Health Organization warned that the outbreak is outstripping the capacity to respond in one of the worst-hit countries.

The military forces will build treatment facilities in Liberia and Sierra Leone to help care for victims of the virus, which has killed more than 2,000 people since it was detected in March.

http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-ebola-africa-us-britain-20140908-story.html

 

[Nebulous]

Hope they can do some good!

 

[Mike]

I'm not saying 'why us' in that I'm against this news, I believe it's the right thing to be doing, I just feel that from a british perspective, 'why just us', we have a similar military spending to a fair few countries that could be joining in with this humanitarian effort. They could be and they should be, hopefully they'll follow this lead.

 

[Dee]

There's nothing wrong with sending more people out there to help with this horrible epidemic. I just wish it wasn't so unfair for these drug companies to be willingly giving out drugs that quite obviously work in some manner to treat patients with it in OUR country as opposed to the many, many people who need it in other countries.

 

[DrLeftover]

There's nothing wrong with sending more people out there to help with this horrible epidemic. ...

OK.

Just hang on to that thought.

18 Sept
(Reuters) - Eight bodies, including those of three journalists, were found after an attack on a team trying to educate locals on the risks of the Ebola virus in a remote area of southeastern Guinea, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

"The eight bodies were found in the village latrine. Three of them had their throats slit," Damantang Albert Camara told Reuters by telephone in Conakry.

However, Guinea's Prime Minister Mohamed Saïd Fofana, speaking in a television message that had been recorded earlier, said 7 bodies of 9 missing people had been found.

He said six people have been arrested following the incident, which took place on Tuesday in Wome, a village close to the town of Nzerekore, in Guinea's southeast, where Ebola was first identified in March.

Since then the virus has killed some 2,630 people and infected at least 5,357 people, according to World Health Organization (WHO), mostly in Guinea, neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia. It has also spread to Senegal and Nigeria.

Authorities in the region are faced with widespread fears, misinformation and stigma among residents of the affected countries, complicating efforts to contain the highly contagious disease.

Fofana said the team that included local administrators, two medical officers, a preacher and three accompanying journalists, was attacked by a hostile stone-throwing crowd from the village when they tried to inform people about Ebola.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/18/us-health-ebbola-guinea-idUSKBN0HD2JE20140918