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US President Barack Obama urged aid groups and other nations to dramatically escalate their response to the Ebola outbreak in western Africa, warning that the epidemic is spiralling out of control.
"If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected, with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us," Obama said on Tuesday after getting briefed by officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The US is deploying about 3,000 US military personnel to the region to assist with shipping and distributing medical equipment, sanitation kits and body bags, among other supplies. American personnel also will help build as many as 20 100-bed treatment centres and train about 500 health-care providers in the region. The Pentagon is asking Congress to shift another $500 million in its budget for Ebola response, doubling the amount it's seeking to spend from its contingency fund to as much as $1 billion, the White House said on Tuesday.
The United Nations Security Council is set to hold an emergency meeting on Ebola on Thursday led by US Ambassador Samantha Power as the virus has begun to spread beyond Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea into Nigeria and Senegal. The epidemic has infected almost 5,000 people and killed about half of them, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that infections may not have peaked.
World Bank warning
The Ebola outbreak could drain billions of dollars from economies in West Africa by the end of next year if the epidemic is not contained, the World Bank said in an analysis on Wednesday. The global development lender predicted that slow containment of the deadly virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone could lead to broader regional contagion, particularly through tourism and trade. Under the worst-case scenario, Guinea's economic growth could be reduced by 2.3 percentage points next year while Sierra Leone's growth would be cut by 8.9 percentage points.
Liberia would be hardest hit, with a reduction of 11.7 percentage points next year.
"We really need to scale up our response and what we have learned from this study is that time is of the essence," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim told reporters.
Even under the best-case scenario, countries would need a "massive" scaling up of their response to contain the disease in the next four to six months, the bank said.
The WHO said the outbreak requires a $1 billion expenditure to limit its spread. "The ($1 billion) is something we need right now, and it could go up rapidly if we do not respond," Kim said.
The bank itself has pledged about $200 million in emergency assistance to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries most affected.
The World Bank predicted the three West African countries so far affected by the virus would lose $359 million in economic output this year. All three also have significant funding gaps, totalling nearly $300 million.
Inflation and food prices were also starting to rise due to shortages, panic buying and speculation, the bank said.
Failure to contain the virus quickly could also affect business in neighboring countries, including Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal.
"The analysis finds that the largest economic effects of the crisis are not as a result of the direct costs ... but rather those resulting from aversion behaviour driven by fear of contagion," the bank said in a statement.
