UN Lacks Resources to Fight Ebola

Ebola

The head of the UN mission charged with fighting Ebola in West Africa has told the BBC he does not yet have the resources necessary to defeat it.

Tony Banbury said more help was urgently needed, despite significant contributions from the UK, China, Cuba and the US.
But he was hopeful of achieving the target of 70 per cent bed space for new cases and 70 per cent safe burials by December.
The confirmed death toll is now 4,818, said the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The numbers are down since the WHO previously reported figures last Friday, as it said it has changed the way the figures are collated.
But it said in the countries worst affected by the outbreak - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - transmission remained "persistent and widespread, particularly in the capital cities".


Banbury was speaking at the UN headquarters for Ebola response in Ghana, which has not been affected by the epidemic, at the end of a regional tour.


He told the BBC it was difficult to say if the spread of the disease is slowing as it was a "very mixed picture".
In Liberia's capital, Monrovia, there was a decline but there was “significant acceleration” elsewhere.
The WHO said that of the planned 4,707 beds in Ebola treatment centres, only 22 per cent are operational - blaming delays on insufficient numbers of foreign medical teams.


“The bed space issue is huge,” Banbury admitted, but he said he hoped that by reducing the numbers of people becoming infected, the UN would eventually be able to reach its targets.


He said his organisation did not yet have the capacity to defeat the disease.
“It's not here yet. There are still people, villages, towns [and] areas that [are] not getting any type of help right now and we definitely don't have the response capability on the ground now from the international community," he said.


At the same time, he mentioned contributions from the UK, which opened a new Ebola centre in Sierra Leone on Wednesday.
Banbury said the US, China and Cuba had all sent significant numbers of soldiers or medics.


Earlier, US officials said President Barack Obama would ask Congress for $6.2 billion (£3.9 billion) to fight Ebola in West Africa and to avoid it spreading in the US.


They said he was requesting $4.5bn in immediate response funds and more than $1.5bn for a contingency fund.
In Liberia, a 25-bed Ebola centre set u