Scientist who identified Ebola virus calls for 'quasi-military intervention'

Scientist who identified Ebola virus calls for 'quasi-military intervention'. HT: Crof.

Via The Guardian: Scientist who identified Ebola virus calls for 'quasi-military intervention'. Excerpt:

The microbiologist who helped identify the Ebola virus in 1976 has urged David Cameron to support a "quasi-military intervention" to stop the current epidemic, which is spreading unchecked in west Africa. 

Professor Peter Piot, the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the outbreak was now so bad that a UN peacekeeping force ought to be mobilised in Sierra Leone and Liberia with huge donations of beds, ambulances and trucks as well as an army of clinicians, doctors and nurses. 

"At the moment, I'm not so optimistic, I'm pessimistic about how to control it. It's one thing to isolate patients or put a small village or town in quarantine; it's another thing when entire countries are affected," he said. "This requires a state of emergency and a kind of quasi-military intervention – and it's not my style to exaggerate." 

Piot, who has worked for the UN and World Health Organisation, said the US and UK efforts were good, but not good enough. "It's all going far too slow; I think there's still no sense that this is an absolute emergency and catastrophe," he said. 

Describing the "formidable management challenge" that lies ahead, he said the biggest question for him was what would happen if the disease spread to "megacities" in Nigeria, where there have already been seven deaths from 19 confirmed cases. 

"One of the reasons for this being out of control is because of the slow response both from the national community and the international community, with the exception of Medecins sans Frontières (MSF)," he added. 

Piot said the Ebola outbreak was discussed at a meeting of the government's Cobra national emergencies committee last month, so he knew Cameron had been briefed on the problem. 

He said: "I call on the government and the prime minister to intensify the country's efforts and provide assistance, and to accelerate it also." 

He said Cameron should sanction the release of up to 100 NHS doctors and nurses to go to Sierra Leone and Liberia and called on the UN to put an international emergency programme into action. "There is no way that the three countries effected most can handle this on their own," he said.