Useless US Ebola hospitals set up in Liberia not used: Report

The United States, in its efforts to combat the deadly Ebola virus in Liberia, took many missteps such as building facilities during the last days of the waning outbreak, thus failing to achieve positive results, officials involved in the humanitarian efforts say.

The failure cast doubt on America’s strategy, which according to analysts familiar with the case, was “slow and unsupportive,” the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The US sent a record 3,000 troops last year to Liberia to combat Ebola which had a devastating impact on the country leaving thousands of people dead or sick and creating an epidemic that affected several countries in the African continent.

It was the biggest US intervention in a global healthcare crisis ever that saw Washington spending millions of dollars of US-taxpayers’ money to support its troops while they carried out their mission there

Hans Rosling, a healthcare expert from Sweden, said international advisers “told the US that they didn’t need to be building anymore” hospitals.

Riosling added his tasks were to “convince the international organizations, ‘You don’t need any more E.T.U.s.’”

“I warned them. Don’t do it,” Rosling claims to have advised the Americans in Liberia at the time, but they ignored the warnings.

It has been recently revealed that the US built 11 hospitals that only treated 28 Ebola patients. In fact, nine of the facilities were never used in the first place putting millions of dollars of resources to waste.

In 2013, an Ebola outbreak, the largest ever, spread like wildfire in Guinea, affecting the lives of millions of people in Liberia, Sierra Leon, Senegal, and Mali.

President Barack Obama, who was criticized for not doing much during the height of the epidemic in late 2014, sent thousands of troops to combat the virus.

“Faced with this outbreak, the world is looking to us, the United States, and it’s a responsibility that we embrace, we are prepared to take leadership on this, to provide the type of capabilities that only America has and mobilize our resources in ways that only America can do,” Obama was quoted as saying when he announced sending troops to Liberia.

However, Obama’s ambitious efforts were washed away as the tremendous amount of troops sent to Liberia had much less of an impact.

The US military deployment to West Africa basically cost $360 million, but relief efforts for three African nations affected by the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever only received $1.6 million.

Even that amount as low as it is compared to the hundreds of millions spent to finance the US military’s venture in Liberia could have impacted forever the healthcare system of Liberia in a positive way if it was spent more properly.

Although Liberia could be declared free of Ebola as soon as next month, healthcare authorities in that part of the world are warning that it is only a matter of time before another outbreak.

HDS/AGB

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