United States called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council Thursday on the Ebola crisis in West Africa, saying the situation on the ground is dire and getting worse every day. US UN Ambassador Samantha Power said the United States has asked the 193 UN member states to come to the meeting with concrete commitments to tackle the outbreak, especially in hardest-hit Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The trendlines in this crisis are grave, and without immediate international action we are facing the potential for a public health crisis that could claim lives on a scale far greater than current estimates, and set the countries of West Africa back a generation, Power told reporters on Monday. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is expected to brief the council along with World Health Organisation chief Dr Margaret Chan and Dr David Nabarro, the recently named UN coordinator to tackle the disease, as well as representatives from the affected countries. A diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official announcement has not yet been made, said it would be only the second time the council takes on a public health issue. The late former US ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, organised a council meeting in January 2000 on the Aids pandemic, which was addressed by then vice president Al Gore.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 07:57:39 +0000
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