Obama to deploy troops to combat Ebola

September 17, 2014 03:02

US lawmakers called for a government-funded "war" to contain West Africa's deadly Ebola epidemic before it threatens more countries, building on an American pledge to send 3,000 military engineers and medical personnel to combat the virus.

"Here's the hard truth. In West Africa, Ebola is now 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 US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 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.

Acknowledging that the epidemic represented a national security crisis, US 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 turned up in Nigeria and Senegal.

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