http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=F3F507A8-47A8-4C67-8683-EE666E745F5C Obama OKs reservists for Africa Ebola fight
By: Philip Ewing
October 16, 2014 05:12 PM EDT
President Barack Obama on Thursday authorized the Pentagon to call up military reservists to help fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
The president issued an executive order and a letter to Congress that said he’d deemed it “necessary to augment the active armed forces of the United States for the effective conduct of Operation United Assistance, which is providing support to civilian-led humanitarian assistance and consequence management support related to the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa.”
About 540 U.S. active duty troops are now posted in Liberia, helping its government, the U.S. Agency for International Development, CDC and other agencies fight the outbreak. Obama’s order would permit the Pentagon to call up National Guard troops or military reservists to join the effort.
“The authorities that have been invoked will ensure the Department of Defense can properly sustain the military operations required in this effort,” Obama told House and Senate leaders in his letter.
As many as 4,000 or more American troops could deploy to West Africa to help fight the Ebola outbreak there, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said Thursday. They’re helping build and support Ebola treatment units, run mobile testing labs and train health care workers in an all-out effort to containing the deadly virus.
USAID’s leader in Monrovia, Ben Hemingway, told reporters at the Pentagon by phone on Thursday that it was “difficult” to assess whether the outbreak has slowed since the international response began. The current military commander in Liberia, Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams, said Marines are still flying to remote parts of the country doing “site surveys” for areas where they could build the Ebola treatment units.
U.S. troops have been tasked with building 17 treatment centers, 65 “community care centers” and setting up four more mobile testing labs. The Pentagon estimates operations there could last a year or more.
Only a handful of specially trained troops working in mobile testing labs are coming in direct contact with the Ebola virus, Williams said. The sailors who work in the labs are testing patient samples to determine which people actually have the virus and which have malaria or the flu, a critical step in triage for patients who need to be isolated. Otherwise, American troops aren’t being ordered to deal with the virus or patients.
Each service member deploying to Liberia is getting special instructions on preventing infection, Williams said, and everyone is taking intense precautions to avoid infection. For example, Williams estimated he’d had his temperature taken eight times just on Wednesday.
“It’s discipline,” he said. “Everyday in the morning with my breakfast, I take a malaria pill … We don’t shake hands. I wash my hands — a lot — with chlorine.”
Williams said commanders have contingency plans in case an American soldier or aid worker does contract Ebola: Those patients would be isolated, quarantined and flown to the U.S. for treatment.
He acknowledged, however, the arrangements aren’t yet clear for American personnel whose normal duty stations are overseas. It isn’t clear, for example, whether the Marines who deployed to Liberia from Spain would have to be quarantined before they can return there, or whether Williams’ own staff members could rotate directly back to Italy.
“That’s being worked at higher levels,” he said.
Williams, Hemingway and the U.S. ambassador to Liberia, Debra Malac, said they expect the momentum in the fight against Ebola to keep building as more U.S. troops, international aid and nongovernmental organizations continue arriving in West Africa. Obama has been pressing for other countries to step up their contributions, and Malac said she thought the mission of containing the outbreak was achievable.
“We are going to get on top of this, however long it takes,” she said. “We hope it’s going to be faster and sooner … but we think it will happen. It’s just a question of when.”
