World leaders are ignoring worldwide threat of Ebola, says MSF

World leaders have failed to “come to grips” with the international threat posed by Ebola virus disease, warns an international humanitarian agency that has admitted it can’t cope with the outbreak in west Africa. Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) has called for states with biological disaster response capacity, including civilian and military medical capability, to dispatch assets and personnel to west Africa immediately. MSF medical teams have been battling the outbreak in the region since March, caring for two thirds of the officially declared infected people, but they can’t cope, said the international charity’s president, Joanne Liu, at a special briefing on Ebola on 2 September at the United Nations headquarters in New York. “Even as we have doubled our staff over the last month, I can tell you that they are completely overwhelmed,” she said. “Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it. Leaders are failing to come to grips with this transnational threat.” Despite MSF’s repeated calls to countries worldwide for a massive mobilisation on the ground, “the response has been too little, too late,” she said. On 28 August the World Health Organization unveiled a plan aimed at stopping ongoing Ebola transmission within six to nine months. This roadmap acknowledged that nearly 40% of the total number of reported cases have …