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Update:
The Australian government will not send doctors or nurses to West Africa to help contain the Ebola crisis until it is certain “all of the risks are being properly managed”, the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has said, according to The Guardian.
Parts of Prime Minister Abbott’s remarks, as reported by The Guardian:
“We aren’t going to send Australian doctors and nurses into harm’s way without being absolutely confident that all of the risks are being properly managed. And at the moment we cannot be confident that that is the case.”
While he admires “the selfless humanitarianism” of the dozens of Australian doctors and nurses currently working in West Africa with non-government organizations, Abbott believes that there is “a world of difference” between that and “ordering Australian personnel to go into a situation without the kind of risk minimisation strategies that any responsible Australian government would have to put it place.”
Abbott stressed, “it would be irresponsible of the Australian government to order our personnel into harm’s way without all appropriate precautions being in place, and at this time, they simply aren’t and they can’t be.”
Read more here.
Original Post:
Reactions to a possible second case of Ebola in the United States — if reactions to the first case are any indication — will most likely range from the panicky, “Look, the cases of Ebola have doubled in the U.S. in less than one month!” to the more impassive and irrelevant, “More than twelve times as many people were killed by lightning in the U.S. last year.”
I personally tend to agree with the views of Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway, who says,
In the meantime, it’s worth noting that none of the people who came in contact with Mr. Duncan casually have tested positive for the disease to date, including family members who spent time with him alone in the days before he was admitted to the hospital. This health care worker, on the other hand, likely had prolonged direct contact with Duncan during the worst parts of his illness, when he would have been most likely to transmit the disease, and had some kind of contact with the bodily fluids that transmit the disease. While this development is certainly a cause for concern, most especially given the fact that someone who was supposed to have been protected from that contact has apparently contracted the disease, it is still not a cause for panic. We aren’t living in Sierra Leone or Liberia, and there’s no evidence that the virus is “in the wild.” Most likely there is a logical explanation for why this has happened. We need to find out what that reason is, of course, but we should keep our wits about us while doing so.
Yes, we need to find out what happened here, but we also cannot let our guard down, nor pooh-pooh the dangers of this horrible virus, and, although “we aren’t living in Sierra Leone or Liberia,” we must do all we can to help the people in West Africa, where:
• Ebola has now killed more than 4,000 people and infected at least 8,000, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
• More than 400 health care workers have contracted Ebola and 233 of those have died, according to the WHO.
• The United Nations peacekeeping mission has placed 41 staff members, including 20 military personnel, under “close medical observation” after an international member of its medical team was diagnosed with Ebola this week — the second mission member to test positive for the deadly disease.
In the meantime, our military continue to help the people in West Africa combat this frightening disease.
At least 700 members of the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, will deploy to Liberia starting this week as part of the U.S. military’s 4,000-soldier humanitarian mission to build 17 100-bed Ebola care centers and training hundreds of health care workers. More than 1,400 are being trained in case that figure rises, according to the Stars and Stripes.
On Thursday, six U.S. military planes — four MV-22 Ospreys and two KC-130s — arrived in the Ebola hot zone with an additional 100 personnel, mostly Marines, bringing to just over 300 the total number of U.S. troops in the country, according to the Stripes.
At Fort Hood, Texas, about 500 soldiers are “[F]orgoing combat rifles and body armor,” preparing to fight Ebola in Liberia “stepping gingerly Thursday into white germ-proof suits and pulling on thick, blue rubber gloves and gas masks,” doing three days of infectious disease training, according to the Stripes.
Maj. John Dills, left, the 36th Engineer Brigade chief of current operations, helps zip and close a protective suit around the M40 protective mask on Sgt. 1st Class Venrick James, during training inside the Medical Skills Training Center at Fort Hood, Texas, on Oct. 9, 2014. That same day at Fort Campbell, Ky., soldiers with the 101st Airborne were receiving similar training in preparation for a deployment to West Africa to help in the fight against Ebola. (Caption: The Stars and Styripes. Photo: Daniel Wallace/U.S. Army)
Of course, the soldiers and their families are concerned,
Sgt. Jesus Sanchez at Fort Campbell says,”I’ll be honest with you…I’m kind of scared … but we’re going out there to help.
Maj. Jim Wade, also from Fort Campbell who has two young kids, says he is confident he can remain safe, despite the dangers. “It’s our job,” he says.
Spc. Michael Potts, 29, a 5-year Army veteran at Fort Hood, Texas, who has previously deployed to Afghanistan, says he’s not nervous — but his family’s a bit jittery.
“They are always worried,” he says. “As long as we’re taken care of and we’re focused on what we have to do in order to help out … then we’ll be all right,” he adds.
Should service members fall ill with the Ebola virus during deployment to Liberia, “they will likely be evacuated the same way at least nine Ebola patients have already been transported to the U.S. and Europe: on one of two jets specially equipped to provide medical treatment and prevent transmission of the contagious, deadly disease,” says the Stripes.
Members of the 65th Operations Support Squadron refuel a Gulfstream III, a civilian air ambulance owned by Phoenix Air, in Lajes Field, Azores, Portugal, Oct. 6, 2014. The Gulfstream was flying to the United States from West Africa to support the U.S. Agency for International Development’s task of containing and eliminating Ebola in the region. The squadron is part of the 65th Air Base Wing, the U.S. unit stationed at Lajes Field. Photo DOD
The U.S. military will receive help from other countries:
British troops are expected to arrive next week in Sierra Leone, where they will join military engineers and planners who have been there for nearly a month helping to construct medical centers.
The German military, which has already been flying material such as protective clothing from Senegal to the worst-hit countries, planned to start a wider deployment of aid in mid-November. The military is expected to set up a clinic for 50 patients.
No hysteria here. Just our troops once again doing their duty in a different but more insidious kind of harm’s way.
Lead Photo: U.S. Marines and sailors assigned to Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response Africa (SPMAGTF-CR-AF) arrive in Monrovia, Liberia, and are ready to provide support to Operation United Assistance, Oct. 9, 2014. Photo U.S. Army
(Edited to add air ambulance photo)
