WASHINGTON – After rallying dozens of nations to join the fight against Islamic State militants, President Barack Obama is back in the coalition-building business – this time to fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Obama is working the phones with world leaders, appealing to them via videoconference and publicly jawboning with one clear message: Stopping the deadly virus at its source is the single best way to prevent the outbreak from spreading. And that requires an infusion of additional money and resources to the hard-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
The U.S. already has two confirmed cases of Ebola in nurses who cared for a Liberian man who died of the disease. Additional cases are likely, officials say.
Obama is sending up to 4,000 troops to West Africa to supply medical, logistical and training support to the region’s overwhelmed health care systems. The U.S. military also is building more than a dozen treatment centers in Liberia with hundreds of beds.
The president hoped the commitment of U.S. forces would spur other countries to follow its example. White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Monday that several heads of state with whom Obama has spoken have so far agreed to contribute at least $300 million to confront Ebola in West Africa in addition to supplying personnel and resources.
But Obama says too many others have not, and he has been venting his frustrations with those that he says are holding back even though they have the resources to help.
“More and more of them are stepping up,” he said late last week after putting out calls to leaders in Canada and Sweden. “Although it’s, I think, taken a little longer than it should, and that’s something that all of us should recognize.”
A few days earlier, he closed a meeting with visiting defense chiefs on the Islamic State by addressing the need for unity in tackling Ebola.
“There are a number of countries that have capacity that have not yet stepped up,” he said. “Those that have stepped up, all of us are going to have to do more because unless we contain this at the source, this is going to continue to pose a threat to individual countries at a time when there’s no place that’s more than a couple of air flights away. And the transmission of this disease obviously directly threats all our populations.”
Obama isn’t the only one spreading the word. The European Union on Monday stepped up efforts to raise more than $1 billion to fight Ebola in West Africa.
Cuba, meanwhile, is sending nearly 400 medical workers, the largest contribution by any single country. Cuban President Raul Castro said he was willing to work with the United States, and that the issue shouldn’t be politicized.
