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UN Announces Mission to Combat Ebola, Declares Outbreak ‘Threat to Peace and Security’

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Thu, 2014-09-18 22:30 — Kathy Gilbeaux

un.org

18 September 2014 – The Security Council, in its first emergency meeting on a public health crisis, today declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a threat to peace and security, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced that the United Nations will deploy a new emergency health mission to combat one of most horrific diseases on the planet that has shattered the lives of millions.

“This international mission, to be known as the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, or UNMEER, will have five priorities: stopping the outbreak, treating the infected, ensuring essential services, preserving stability and preventing further outbreaks,” Mr. Ban told the Security Council.

“Under the leadership of a Special Representative of the Secretary-General, the Mission will bring together the full range of UN actors and expertise in support of national efforts,” he said, adding that details of the mission were sent in a letter to the Security Council and the UN General Assembly.

The Secretary-General said the mission’s effectiveness will depend crucially on support from the international community.

“Our best estimate is that we need a 20-fold increase in assistance,” he said. The United Nations this week outlined a set of critical needs totalling almost $1 billion over the next six months.

Mr. Ban spoke before the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution, sponsored by 131 countries – reportedly more than any other sponsors of a resolution to date in the chamber – “determining that the unprecedented extent of the Ebola outbreak in Africa constitute a threat to international peace and security.”

Expressing concern about the detrimental effect of the isolation of Ebola-hit Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone as a result of trade and travel restrictions imposed on the affected countries, the Council called on Member States, including of the region, to such restrictions imposed as a result of the outbreak, and to facilitate the delivery of assistance, including qualified, specialized and trained personnel and supplies to the affected countries.

Briefing the Council members, Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said: “None of us experienced in containing outbreaks has ever seen, in our lifetimes, an emergency on this scale, with this degree of suffering and with this magnitude of cascading consequences.”

Emphasizing that the current reports that show that more than 5,500 people have been infected by Ebola and more than 2,500 killed by it in West Africa are “vast underestimates,” Dr. Chan said the WHO Ebola Response Roadmap outlines 12 critical actions.

“The fact that the United States, Unite Kingdom, China, Cuba and other countries are using a variety of assets, including military, speaks to the complexity of the challenge,” she said.

“This surge in support could help turn things around for the roughly 22 million people, in the hardest-hit countries whose lives and societies have been shattered by one of the most horrific diseases on this planet,” Dr. Chan said.

The Secretary-General said “the penalty for inaction is high. We need to race ahead of the outbreak – and then turn and face it with all our energy and strength.” He called out to non-traditional donors, the business community, for example, to contribute in the health, transport, communications and information sectors.

Both the UN Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council for the month of September, US Ambassador Samantha Power, said only twice before has the Security Council met to discuss the security implications of a public health issue – both times on the AIDS epidemic.

Today’s meeting was the first emergency meeting on a public health issue, according to the Security Council President.

In his closing remarks to the Council, Dr. David Nabarro, the Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Ebola, welcomed the “powerful solidarity” shown during the day-long meeting for the countries affected, as well as appreciation for what they and their partners are doing to confront the outbreak. Some countries, including from Africa, had offered some significant commitments in support of the international Ebola response.

“This has been such an extraordinary outpouring of support from all over the world – a real global coalition,” he said.

Speaking to the press immediately after the meeting, Dr. Chan said she too had been touched by the outpouring of solidarity, which “gives us hope that the global community understands the severity of the outbreak and the fact that no one country or organization can address it alone.”

Also briefing the Council today was Jackson K. P. Niamah of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) via videoconference from Monrovia, Liberia.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48746#.VBuEjxZupbE

Deadly Ebola Outbreak Matters to Everyone, Secretary-General Tells Security Council, Urging Financial Support for Special Emergency Response Mission

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks to the Security Council meeting on Ebola, in New York today:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2014/sgsm16154.doc.htm

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Africa
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Guinea
United States
General Topic Tags: 
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Disease
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Security
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Fri, 2014-09-19 07:13 — mike kraft

NYT overview story

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/world/africa/ebola-presents-challenge-and-an-opportunity-for-un-leader.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C{%222%22%3A%22RI%3A14%22}&_r=0

UNITED NATIONS — Ban Ki-moon, in his seventh year as the secretary general
of the United Nations, has a full plate of unsolved problems, from a
widening war in Syria to conflicts in the Central African Republic and South
Sudan — to say nothing of climate change.

Now comes Ebola.

For Mr. Ban, it represents a crucial test of leadership — but also an
opportunity. If he can be more effective in mobilizing world leaders to
contain this calamity than he has in the others, it can serve as something
akin to redemption. Or else it could leave a deep stain on his legacy.

On Thursday, in an unusual move, the Security Council declared the Ebola
epidemic in West Africa a threat to international peace and security,
passing a resolution that calls on countries worldwide to send medical
personnel and supplies urgently to contain the outbreak.
Continue reading the main story
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Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O., after a meeting
in New York on Monday.
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Mr. Ban told the Council of his plans to set up an emergency mission to
tackle the swiftly spreading disease, which has already killed more than
2,600 people in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The new emergency mission
would enable the United Nations to coordinate the world response to the
outbreak, Mr. Ban said, adding that an advance team would be on the ground
by the end of the month.
Continue reading the main story
Graphic
What You Need to Know About the Ebola Outbreak

Questions and answers on the scale of the outbreak and the science of the
Ebola virus.
OPEN Graphic

On Friday, Mr. Ban is scheduled to brief the 193-member General Assembly on
the mission. And he is convening a meeting of heads of state to discuss the
Ebola response next Thursday, on the sidelines of the General Assembly
session that begins next week.

“Ebola matters to us all,” Mr. Ban said Thursday at the Council session.
“The gravity and scale of the situation now requires a level of
international action unprecedented for a health emergency.”

Jean-Marie Guéhenno, a former senior United Nations official and now
president of the International Crisis Group, noted both the possibilities
and the perils facing Mr. Ban.

“The secretary general is ideally placed to focus sustained attention on
cross-border challenges that overwhelm the capacities of any single state,”
he said by email. “The Ebola crisis is precisely such a challenge. And if it
is neglected, the chances of state breakdown and violent upheaval could grow
dramatically.”

Margaret Chan, the director general of the World Health Organization, called
it the “greatest peacetime challenge” that the United Nations had faced.

Ebola has devastated the economies of three fragile West African countries,
spread panic and fear across much of the world, and taken a particularly
devastating toll on health workers treating Ebola patients.

“In some ways, Ebola is the perfect crisis to show why the U.N. matters:
Solving it will take the whole range of U.N. tools,” including its tens of
thousands of peacekeepers and experts on global health, said Richard Gowan,
an associate director at New York University’s Center on International
Cooperation. “Ban can talk about it as a case-study of why we need a strong
U.N. and reliable global institutions, in contrast to a divisive political
showdown like Ukraine.”
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story

All the same, the crisis points precisely to the weaknesses of the world
body. The United Nations has already come under withering criticism for not
reacting more swiftly to the epidemic. The W.H.O., its main health agency,
declared Ebola an international health emergency only in August, months
after it had spread across borders, and it has been unable to handle the
rise in infections.

Mr. Ban is hamstrung on reacting to the Ebola crisis in obvious ways. He has
no money, no standing army and no arsenal of field hospitals, doctors or
nurses on hand. He relies on member states, and at the Council session on
Thursday, he reiterated his plea for countries to contribute. The United
Nations says tackling Ebola will cost at least $1 billion.

The most poignant appeal came from a Liberian aid worker with Doctors
Without Borders. “We are trying to treat as many people as we can, but there
are not nearly enough treatment centers and patient beds,” the worker,
Jackson Naimah, told the Council by videolink. “We have to turn people away.
And they are dying at our front door.”

Mr. Naimah appealed for helicopters, hospital beds and health experts. “I
feel that the future of my country is hanging in the balance,” he said.

As diplomats spoke at the Council session, a Unicef official in Monrovia,
the Liberian capital, said the country’s Ebola hotline and ambulance
services were so overstretched that five children were left at home alone
with the corpses of their Ebola-infected parents for three days. Some of the
children were now hospitalized with symptoms of Ebola.

The Security Council resolution reflects the attention that the United
States has recently put into the effort. President Obama has pledged
medicine, equipment and 3,000 military personnel to help Liberia, and the
United States drafted the resolution and called the emergency session.

“So to every country represented here, especially those still figuring out
how they will respond, take this message back to your capitals, please,” the
American ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said. “The math
is simple: The sooner we act, the more of us that contribute, the more lives
we save.

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