Public Health - Conakry

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http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/hearing/subcommittee-hearing-global-efforts-fight-ebola

House Committee on Foreign Affairs - Subcommittee Hearing: Global Efforts to Fight Ebola

2172 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 | Sep 17, 2014 10:00am to 1:00pm

Chairman Smith on the hearing: “This latest outbreak of the Ebola virus has far outpaced all previous outbreaks.  Because of various challenges heretofore unseen, such as urban infections, cross-border transmissions and increasing infections and deaths of health care workers, the current outbreak is expanding exponentially.  This hearing will examine the problems faced by the global coalition to fight Ebola. We will hear directly from the National Institutes of Health, the FDA and an American doctor who contracted and survived Ebola, and other witnesses.”

Witnesses

Panel I

whitehouse.gov - September 16, 2014

As the President has stated, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and the humanitarian crisis there is a top national security priority for the United States.  In order to contain and combat it, we are partnering with the United Nations and other international partners to help the Governments of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Senegal respond just as we fortify our defenses at home. Every outbreak of Ebola over the past 40 years has been contained, and we are confident that this one can—and will be—as well.

Our strategy is predicated on four key goals:

un.org

15 September 2014 – The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Thursday to discuss the Ebola outbreak that has gripped West Africa, the president of the 15-member body announced today.

The outbreak, affecting Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, is unprecedented in scope – with more than 4,000 cases having been reported across the region and over 2,200 deaths. It has also dealt a major blow to the already fragile health care systems in West Africa.

“The trend lines in this crisis are grave and without immediate international action we are facing the potential for a public health crisis that could claim lives on a scale far greater than current estimates and set the countries of West Africa back a generation,” Ambassador Samantha Power of the United States, which holds the Council’s presidency for September, told reporters at UN Headquarters.

The meeting – requested by the US owing to the “increasingly grim situation,” particularly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – is expected to hear from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as senior UN officials dealing with the Ebola crisis.