Ebola: Speeches are not enough, MSF chief tells Obama

Ebola: Speeches are not enough, MSF chief tells Obama. HT: Crof.

In the army, we called it "kicking ass and taking names"; MSF International president Dr. Joanne Liu is very good at it (and, I'm proud to say, a Canadian). Via The Guardian: Ebola epidemic: speeches are not enough, MSF chief tells Obama. Excerpt:

The head of the aid group Médecins sans Frontières has warned Barack Obama and other world leaders that UN resolutions on the Ebola crisis are worthless unless they are translated into immediate action. 

Joanne Liu said that there was no end in sight for the epidemic in western Africa, with infection rates doubling rapidly. 

“Fear and panic have set in, as infection rates double every three weeks. Mounting numbers are dying of other diseases, like malaria, because health systems have collapsed,” she told a United Nations general assembly high-level meeting on Thursday evening. 

Her warning came as the UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon warned that “despite the valiant efforts of local communities, health systems are buckling under the strain” with more than 200 a day dying. 

MSF’s latest country-by-country update on the Ebola epidemic shows the outbreak is worsening in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Hopes that it was finally under control in Guinea have been dashed with new cases in districts close to Conakry and Lola near the Ivory Coast. 

In Liberia, patients numbers are increasing every day with doctors turning away sick people from its two hospitals in Monrovia. 

“Our 150-bed facility in Monrovia opens for just 30 minutes each morning,” Liu said. Only a few people are admitted - to fill beds made empty by those who died overnight. The sick continue to be turned away, only to return home and spread the virus among loved ones and neighbours,” she added. 

In Sierra Leone, MSF’s field hospital in Kailahun received 28 patients in one day as a result of the house-to-house search during curfew at the weekend. It said there was a shortage of ambulances to collect patients, with many travelling for hours in “cramped and deplorable conditions”. As a result, some were dead on arrival. 

She said just a few states were carrying the load in west Africa and that “complacency is a worse enemy than the virus”. Hmmm....'Empty barrels make the most noise' !