Editorial: U.S. Must Lead Effort on Ebola

Sept. 21--Ebola is completely out of control in West Africa. It will take an international effort, led by America, to contain the epidemic.

The disease has a fatality rate of more than 50 percent in humans, a prospect that has paralyzed the people and economies of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal.

Health officials say Ebola has already killed 2,400 people, most of them in Liberia. But officials suspect the actual number is much higher. They believe it could begin growing exponentially.

Last week, President Barack Obama said he'd send 3,000 military personnel to Liberia. It is at once a long-necessary humanitarian step and a protective one.

Every new case of Ebola increases the chances the virus could escape Africa on an airplane bound for anywhere in the world.

"We must take the dangerous, deadly threat of the Ebola epidemic as seriously as we take ISIS," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

The World Health Organization has said the number of cases soon could begin doubling every three weeks. That sort of growth could devastate a continent already unable to cope.

For months, the United Nations agency has been warning that controlling Ebola will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and require thousands of medical personnel. Last week, the WHO raised the price tag to fight Ebola to $1 billion.

The countries hardest hit by the outbreak are some of the poorest. The lack of doctors and nurses and hospital beds, and medical systems short on supplies and disease-containment protocols, means that existing efforts have failed so completely that patients no longer seek help.

Since Ebola is communicated by contaminated bodily fluids, patients suffering outside a hospital setting are more likely to spread the disease.

The U.S. effort, Obama said last week, would focus on adding capacity to overwhelmed health systems.

The Americans would train 500 health care workers a week. Build facilities with 100 beds each. Provide home health care kits and training on how to treat patients. Coordinate U.S. and international efforts from headquarters in Monrovia, Liberia.

Like the 2004 Indian Ocean tidal wave and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the Ebola outbreak in Africa is an historic humanitarian crisis. Among the world's nations, America has the greatest store of expertise, wealth and willingness to rush aid to strangers in peril.

There's an endless list of demands on America's riches and its good will. Even so, the Ebola outbreak belongs at the top.

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