US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power (AFP Photo)
Brussels, Belgium:
US envoy Samantha Power said she will return from West Africa to the United States and the United Nations on Thursday with a message of "hope and possibility" that the global response to the Ebola outbreak is working, but more resources are needed.
Speaking to Reuters after visiting the three worst-affected countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Power said among several areas to focus on was removing the stigma of the deadly hemorrhagic disease in those countries and around the world.
Ebola survivors in West Africa have been shunned, while Australia has banned visas for citizens of the three countries and several US states have imposed a mandatory quarantine on health care workers returning from the region.
"It is quite literally the most heartbreaking form of ailment that any community could ever go through where you cannot care for your loved ones," Power said. "The only thing worse than losing a child is not being able to hold the child that you're losing. It's mind-blowing."
She said recently established command and control centers in the capitals of Liberia and Sierra Leone - bringing together the governments, the United Nations, foreign countries taking a lead in the response and aid groups - were proving successful.
The coordination was "a sight to behold," said Power.
In Freetown in Sierra Leone, the rate of safe burials of the highly contagious bodies of Ebola victims had risen from 30 percent to 98 percent in the few days a burial command center had been in operation, while in Liberia a mobile laboratory in a remote area had cut testing times from five days to five hours.
"It's a great privilege to be able to bring back that sense of hope and possibility to the United States and to the U.N. Now the message is, 'What we are doing is working,'" she said.
"What we have is not enough, but we know from our interventions that they can have these pronounced speedy effects. So now we can say you have opportunity to be a part of a winning enterprise," Power said of her bid to convince more countries to join the response efforts.
'WHERE WERE YOU?'
Power said it was important that command and control centers were now in place in regional areas in all three countries.
She said lessons could be learned and shared from the responses in each country. In Guinea, the national response center in Conakry was a couple of conference rooms with few resources and UN officials were based elsewhere in the city.
As hundreds of millions of dollars is spent on tackling the outbreak, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that Liberia may be seeing a decline in the spread of the virus, though the battle is far from won.
"Given the unpredictability of the epidemic, the risk of having excess capacity on the ground and available is a risk well worth taking," Andy Weber, deputy head of the U.S. State Department's Ebola Coordination Unit, told Reuters.
"We can't stop the work to get as many of the required ETUs (Ebola Treatment Units) in place, to have them geographically dispersed so they're accessible to as many potential patients as possible," said Weber, who traveled to West Africa with Power.
Power will speak at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels on Thursday. She says more countries need to step up to help fight the disease that has killed 5,000 people mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since March, with a handful of cases in Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Spain and the United States.
The epidemic remains at a scale and severity the world has never seen before, said Power, who spoke with Reuters as she traveled to Brussels from West Africa.
"It will be something people talk about generations from now. There are these historical challenges that arise. Sometimes it's the violence that one country commits against another, or atrocities against civilians. It could be a tsunami. Here it is the worst public health emergency in history," she said.
"People will ask, 'Where were you when Ebola tried to wipe out communities in West Africa?'"
Speaking to Reuters after visiting the three worst-affected countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Power said among several areas to focus on was removing the stigma of the deadly hemorrhagic disease in those countries and around the world.
Ebola survivors in West Africa have been shunned, while Australia has banned visas for citizens of the three countries and several US states have imposed a mandatory quarantine on health care workers returning from the region.
"It is quite literally the most heartbreaking form of ailment that any community could ever go through where you cannot care for your loved ones," Power said. "The only thing worse than losing a child is not being able to hold the child that you're losing. It's mind-blowing."
She said recently established command and control centers in the capitals of Liberia and Sierra Leone - bringing together the governments, the United Nations, foreign countries taking a lead in the response and aid groups - were proving successful.
The coordination was "a sight to behold," said Power.
In Freetown in Sierra Leone, the rate of safe burials of the highly contagious bodies of Ebola victims had risen from 30 percent to 98 percent in the few days a burial command center had been in operation, while in Liberia a mobile laboratory in a remote area had cut testing times from five days to five hours.
"It's a great privilege to be able to bring back that sense of hope and possibility to the United States and to the U.N. Now the message is, 'What we are doing is working,'" she said.
"What we have is not enough, but we know from our interventions that they can have these pronounced speedy effects. So now we can say you have opportunity to be a part of a winning enterprise," Power said of her bid to convince more countries to join the response efforts.
'WHERE WERE YOU?'
Power said it was important that command and control centers were now in place in regional areas in all three countries.
She said lessons could be learned and shared from the responses in each country. In Guinea, the national response center in Conakry was a couple of conference rooms with few resources and UN officials were based elsewhere in the city.
As hundreds of millions of dollars is spent on tackling the outbreak, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that Liberia may be seeing a decline in the spread of the virus, though the battle is far from won.
"Given the unpredictability of the epidemic, the risk of having excess capacity on the ground and available is a risk well worth taking," Andy Weber, deputy head of the U.S. State Department's Ebola Coordination Unit, told Reuters.
"We can't stop the work to get as many of the required ETUs (Ebola Treatment Units) in place, to have them geographically dispersed so they're accessible to as many potential patients as possible," said Weber, who traveled to West Africa with Power.
Power will speak at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels on Thursday. She says more countries need to step up to help fight the disease that has killed 5,000 people mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since March, with a handful of cases in Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Spain and the United States.
The epidemic remains at a scale and severity the world has never seen before, said Power, who spoke with Reuters as she traveled to Brussels from West Africa.
"It will be something people talk about generations from now. There are these historical challenges that arise. Sometimes it's the violence that one country commits against another, or atrocities against civilians. It could be a tsunami. Here it is the worst public health emergency in history," she said.
"People will ask, 'Where were you when Ebola tried to wipe out communities in West Africa?'"
© Thomson Reuters 2014
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