WASHINGTON, October 17 (RIA Novosti) - The international community needs to act jointly and quickly to fight the Ebola virus outbreak raging in West Africa, US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Friday.
"Nothing that one, two, three countries do together is going to solve it [Ebola outbreak], we have to all be engaged in this. There is no country that is exempt from being able to do something, to be able to contribute to this effort and help make a difference. And everything we do depends on how we coordinate our efforts as partners and how we contribute together," Kerry said at a briefing on the US response to Ebola for members of the Diplomatic Corps at the Department of State.
Kerry noted that today large and small nations from all over the world have contributed their efforts in combating the deadly virus, though he said it was not enough.
So far, he added, less than a third of the UN estimate of $1 billion, which is needed to fight Ebola, has been collected.
There is an immediate need of 200 flatbed trucks, 350 soft-skinned vehicles for transport of aid and resources, more helicopters and capable crews, more mobile laboratories, treatment centers and beds, more incinerators and generators, according to Kerry.
"If we don't adequately address it now, Ebola has a potential to become a scourge like HIV or polio that we will end up fighting for decades," Kerry warned, adding that the Ebola combat is going to be long, costly and not risk-free.
The current Ebola epidemic, one of the current global security issues, started in southern Guinea at the end of 2013 and later spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Senegal, with several Ebola cases having been reported outside of West Africa.
According to the World Health Organization, the current outbreak has claimed the lives of almost 4,484 people, with a total number of 8,973 confirmed Ebola cases.
