Jeff Hulbert from Annapolis, Maryland, calls for a halt of flights from West Africa, as he protests outside the White House in Washington, DC on October 16, 2014/AFP
Oxfam, which works in the two worst-hit countries – Liberia and Sierra Leone – on Saturday called for more troops, funding and medical staff to be sent to tackle the west African epicentre of the epidemic.
Chief executive Mark Goldring warned that the world was “in the eye of a storm”.
“We cannot allow Ebola to immobilise us in fear, but… countries that have failed to commit troops, doctors and enough funding are in danger of costing lives,” he said.
The worst-ever outbreak of the deadly virus has so far killed more than 4,500 people, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but isolated cases have now begun to appear in Europe and the United States.
“The Ebola crisis could become the definitive humanitarian disaster of our generation,” a spokesperson for the British-based charity said as it appealed for EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday to do more.
Obama’s warning about hysteria came a day after the World Bank said the battle against the disease was being lost and as the US president named an “Ebola czar” to coordinate Washington’s response.
In Sierra Leone, Defence Minister Alfred Paolo Conteh was put in charge of the fight against the disease as the death toll there rose to 1,200.
In a statement, President Ernest Bai Koroma said the defence minister would “with immediate effect” head a new national Ebola response centre.
A global UN appeal for nearly $1 billion (785 billion euros) to fight the spread of the disease has so far fallen short, but a spokesman told AFP more money was coming in daily.
Out of $988 million requested a month ago, the UN said Saturday $385.9 million had already been given by a slew of governments and agencies, with a further $225.8 million promised.
“It has been encouraging to see the amount and the speed with which these amounts have been committed,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA).
But the total was still some way off, Laerke said. “Nobody’s smiling in this crisis, so I’m not going to go out and clap my hands and say everything is going fine, because it’s not,” he told AFP.
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