Obama seeks $6bn Ebola funds
US President Barack Obama announces executive actions on US immigration policy in Washington, DC, on November 20, 2014. The White House his first visit to the country since being elected President.. PHOTO | JIM BOURG |
What you need to know:
- Mr Obama said while efforts to fight Ebola had broadly united Republicans and Democrats to date, he warned against the funding being caught in the crossfire of a bitter budget battle on Capitol Hill.
- Hostility from locals has been a persistent problem for foreign aid workers, who are confronted with wild theories which place them as the authors of a global conspiracy to harvest the blood and organs of black Africans. The enmity has frequently escalated into serious unrest.
WASHINGTON
President Barack Obama urged US lawmakers to release a $6 billion war chest to help the fight against Ebola, warning that the deadly disease could not be beaten without additional funding.
Speaking at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, on Wednesday, Obama called on Congress to approve the emergency funding to help battle the virus, saying the west African outbreak remained a threat.
“We cannot beat Ebola without more funding,” Obama said.
“And if we want other countries to keep stepping up, we have to keep leading the way,” added Mr Obama, noting that some 3,000 American civilians and military were now deployed on the ground in west Africa, mostly in Liberia, the worst-affected country.
Mr Obama said while efforts to fight Ebola had broadly united Republicans and Democrats to date, he warned against the funding being caught in the crossfire of a bitter budget battle on Capitol Hill.
“I am calling on Congress to approve our emergency funding request to fight this disease before” they recess later this month, said Obama, who requested the funding in early November.
SUSPICION AMONG LOCALS
“We have to extinguish this disease, this is not something that we can just manage with a few cases here and there.
“That is not a partisan issue. That is a basic common sense issue.”
Meanwhile, the Red Cross and Red Crescent said suspicion among locals in Ebola-hit west Africa remained a major hurdle in battling the outbreak, months into the worst epidemic on record.
Elhadj As Sy, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told reporters in the Senegalese capital Dakar on Wednesday, his teams were still regularly confronted by “acts of hostility” in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
“People think we bring more misery than happiness, or just take bodies away and put people in quarantine,” he said, adding that volunteers had encountered abuse recently, without going into detail.
Hostility from locals has been a persistent problem for foreign aid workers, who are confronted with wild theories which place them as the authors of a global conspiracy to harvest the blood and organs of black Africans. The enmity has frequently escalated into serious unrest.
