WASHINGTON (AP/WMOT) — President Obama has a plan to ramp up the U.S. response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
Calling the Ebola crisis a threat to world security, Obama is ordering up to 3,000 U.S. military personnel to the region along with an aggressive effort to train health care workers and deliver field hospitals.
The president and Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander don’t see eye to eye on much, but in a speech delivered yesterday on the Senate floor, Alexander agreed that Ebola is a serious threat.
“This is one of the most deadly, explosive epidemics in modern times. It moves rapidly, there’s no vaccine, and there’s no cure. …One could see how quickly this could spread and become hundreds of thousands of cases or even millions of cases.”
Under the president’s plan, the U.S. could end up devoting $1 billion to containing the disease.