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U.S. to dispatch 3,000 troops to Liberia

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The Obama administration is preparing to assign 3,000 U.S. military personnel to West Africa to supply needed medical and logistical support to assist overwhelmed local health care systems in managing the Ebola pandemic.

President Barack Obama made the announcement on Tuesday during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta where he said the outbreak could spread and that the deadly virus could mutate into a more easily transmitted disease. The new American policy comes after appeals from the region and from aid organizations for an increased U.S. response in combating the disease, which has killed more than 2,200 persons.

Administration officials said the deployment is designed to:

—Train as many as 500 healthcare workers each week;

—Build 17 healthcare centers containing 100 beds each;

—Establish a joint command headquartered in Monrovia, Liberia, to coordinate between U.S. and international relief efforts;

—Provide home healthcare kits to hundreds of thousands of households, including 50,000 that the U.S. Agency for International Development began distributing this week;

—Implement a home- and community-based campaign to train local populations on how to handle exposed patients.

On Capitol Hill this week, a Senate panel conducted a hearing where Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Kent Brantly, an American physician who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia, each testified about the growing extent of the disease and how it is spreading to neighboring countries. Hardest hit by the outbreak are Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The virus has also reached Nigeria and Senegal.

Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients, making doctors and nurses especially vulnerable to contracting the virus, which has no vaccine or approved treatment.

The U.S. has spent more than $100 million to date responding to the outbreak and has offered to operate treatment centers for adults.

United Nations officials said the cost of the humanitarian response to the pandemic has multiplied tenfold in one month to $1 billion. A previous forecast of 20,000 Ebola cases is no longer a high figure, one U.N. official said, as weak West African healthcare systems have collapsed from the strain.

“This health crisis we’re facing is unparalleled in modern times,” World Health Organization Assistant Director General Bruce Alward said at a new conference in Geneva, Switzerland. “We don’t know where the numbers are going on this.”

U.S. troops will set up a command hub in Liberia—a nation founded by freed American slaves—as well as build 17 treatment centers and train thousands of local health workers. At press time, it was not clear when the troops would start deploying nor how long they would remain. Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wrote to President Obama last week to request direct U.S. intervention.

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