DOD dials back number of troops to fight Ebola
By Chris Carroll
Stars and Stripes
Published: November 12, 2014
Mary Rose Mittlesteadt/U.S. Army
WASHINGTON — Fewer U.S. troops are needed in West Africa to combat an Ebola outbreak than previously thought, dropping the planned deployment by about 1,000 servicemembers, the general in charge of the operation said Wednesday.
There are now 2,200 troops, some from each service branch, in Liberia, expected to top out just short of 3,000 in mid-December, said Army Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, commander of Operation United Assistance.
The Pentagon had planned to send about 4,000 troops to Africa to combat the largest Ebola outbreak in history. The outbreak may now be waning in Liberia, but Ebola continues to kill there and elsewhere, with a death toll that recently topped 5,000, according to the World Health Organization.
American troops are deploying primarily to help with engineering and logistical demands, functions which U.S. officials discovered Liberians were better able to handle than expected, Volesky told reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference from the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
“What we found working with [the U.S. Agency for International Development] and the government of Liberia was that there was a lot of capacity here that we didn’t know about before, and so that enabled us to reduce the forces that we thought we originally had to bring,” he said.
USAID had already identified and begun working with capable local contractors able to help construct treatment facilities, Volesky said. Liberian troops, meanwhile, did most of the work building the first of up to 17 Ebola treatment units planned for completion by the end of the year, he said.
So far no U.S. troops nor Defense Department civilians have shown any signs of infection, which Volesky said was a result of effective training in personal protection from the virus both before and during the deployment. Commanders are keeping close watch over their troops, he said.
You won’t see soldiers roaming all over Liberia; we’ve got it very controlled,” he said. “They go places where there’s a mission, and we just make sure that we’re following all those protocols.”
U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Deborah R. Malac said that while the total number of cases is still rising, Ebola infection rates in the country have dropped significantly. Just 45 people throughout the country became infected Tuesday, compared to about 100 daily contracting the virus in Monrovia alone at the height of the outbreak, she said.
President Barack Obama’s decision to send the U.S. military sparked an influx of international nongovernmental organizations willing to help fight the disease, she said during the Wednesday teleconference.
“The presence of the U.S. military and the capacity that they bring to the table has been a real confidence builder for all of these NGO partners who are now stepping forward in response to help us with this effort,” Malac said.
carroll.chris@stripes.com
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