MSF: "Still a massive shortage of qualified and trained medical staff on the ground"

[Gert van der Hoek]

Only the military can get the Ebola epidemic under control: MSF head

BMJ 2014; 349 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g6151

(Published 10 October 2014)


Sophie Arie talks to MSF?s president, Joanne Liu, about her frustrations at the slow international response to the Ebola epidemic

M?decins Sans Fronti?res (MSF), the humanitarian medical charity, has been on the front lines of the Ebola epidemic since it began. It has had a major role in the international effort to control the outbreak, caring for two thirds of the 8000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia who have been infected. But in early September, after six months of battling Ebola in vain, and with the death toll mounting exponentially, MSF effectively admitted defeat and said that it would take major military mobilisation by wealthy countries with biohazard expertise, not just international aid, to stop the disease. The charity had doubled its staff, MSF?s president, Joanne Liu, told the UN members, but it still was overwhelmed.

Liu describes the current military efforts as the equivalent, in public health terms, of airstrikes without boots on the ground. Pledges of equipment and logistical support are helpful??The military are the only body that can be deployed in the numbers needed now and that can organise things fast.? But there is still a massive shortage of qualified and trained medical staff on the ground. ?You need to send people not stuff and get hands on, not try to do this remotely,? Liu says, ?Local doctors have been extremely brave, but we are running out of staff and that is why we are asking for a major workforce to deploy.?

?I am running out of words to convey the sense of urgency. The despair is so huge and the indifference so incredible.?

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