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 Democratic and Republican lawmakers pledged increased support for
efforts to contain the virus that has killed nearly 2,500 people out
of almost 5,000 cases in West Africa.
"We need to declare a war on Ebola," Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas
Republican, said during a joint hearing before the Senate committees
on Appropriations and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, said the country
should view the threat of Ebola "as seriously as we take ISIS,"
referring to the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq.
The hearing was the Senate's first on the Ebola outbreak in West
Africa, an epidemic the likes of which have not been seen before,
President Barack Obama said during a meeting with top U.S. public
health officials.
"It's spiraling out of control, it's getting worse," he said at the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta,
where he flew to outline the plan to deploy 3,000 troops to West
Africa.
The deployment represented a ramping-up in the Obama
administration's response to the worst Ebola outbreak on record. It
comes after repeated calls for governments to step in and help West
African countries whose healthcare systems have been overwhelmed by
the epidemic.
In a news conference at the Capitol, U.S. House of Representatives
Speaker John Boehner said he was "a bit surprised the administration
hasn’t acted more quickly to address what is a serious threat, not
just to Africans but to others around the world."
Boehner said in coming weeks, "you’re going to see the Congress and
the administration take further steps to look at how do we best
contain this very horrible disease."
Acknowledging that the epidemic represented a national security
crisis, U.S. administration officials said the focus of the military
deployment would be on Liberia, where the threat of chaos is
greatest. The disease has also hit hard in Sierra Leone and Guinea,
and has led to a handful of deaths in Nigeria.
Under the plan, engineers, medical personnel and other service
members would build 17 treatment centers with 100 beds each, train
thousands of healthcare workers and establish a military control
center for coordinating the relief effort, U.S. officials told
reporters.
"Some have asked why should our military be involved," Senator
Alexander said. "They have to be involved, if we want to deal with
the problem. There's no way for the doctors and the nurses and the
healthcare workers to deal with it."
Officials said the Defense Department had sought to reallocate $500
million in funds from fiscal 2014 to help cover the costs of the
humanitarian mission.
"The reality is we all have to do more," said Senator Patty Murray,
a Democrat from Washington.
Witnesses at the joint hearing said the proposed $88 million
included in a stopgap U.S. government funding legislation to be
considered by the House on Wednesday will only last through Dec. 11.
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The measure, which meets a last-minute request from Obama, provides
$30 million for more staff and supplies at the CDC and $58 million
to speed up production of Mapp Biopharmaceutical's experimental
Ebola drug ZMapp and vaccine candidates.
"We and others will need more funding. There is no doubt about
that," Dr. Robin Robinson, director of Biomedical Advanced Research
and Development Authority at the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, said when asked whether his agency had the resources it
needs.
United Nations officials on Tuesday estimate it will now take a $1
billion response to contain the outbreak to tens of thousands of
cases.
The World Health Organization has said it needs foreign medical
teams with 500 to 600 experts as well as at least 10,000 local
health workers. The figures may rise if the number of cases
increases, as is widely expected.
"If we do not act now to stop the spread of Ebola, we could be
dealing with it for years to come, affecting larger areas of
Africa," Dr. Beth Bell, CDC director of the National Center for
Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told the Senate hearing.
In addition to adding capacity, the U.S. effort in West Africa will
focus on training. A site will be established where military medical
personnel will teach healthcare workers how to care for Ebola
patients, at a rate of 500 workers per week for six months or
longer, officials said.
The U.S. Agency for International Development will support a program
to distribute home protection kits with sanitizers and medical
supplies to 400,000 households in Liberia, something Dr Kent Brantly,
a U.S. missionary doctor who has recovered from Ebola, argued for
passionately at the hearing.
Although some critics have said such kits might encourage families
to treat Ebola patients at home, risking spreading the disease,
Brantly said health agencies must "be open to practical
interventions" that could help keep families safe from a disease he
described as "a fire, straight from the pit of hell."
(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva, Sha; ron Begley in New
York, Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Susan Heavey and David Lawder
in Washington; Writing by Michele Gershberg; Editing by Jonathan
Oatis)
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