Ebola Causing Food Shortages In West Africa

The United Nations has said that the spread
of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa was
causing food shortages in one of the world’s
poorest regions and the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention warned that
the disease was threatening the stability of
stricken countries and their neighbours.
Doctors in Liberia were out on strike as they
struggled to cope with the worst outbreak of
Ebola on record, while the global aid
organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF),
said that 800 more beds for Ebola patients
were urgently needed in the Liberian capital,
Monrovia alone, while in Sierra Leone, highly
infectious bodies were rotting in the streets.
Governments and aid organisations have
scrambled to contain the disease, which
according to the World Health Organization, has
killed more than 1,500 in West Africa since
March.
In an address to United Nations member
states, MSF President, Joanne Liu, said: “Six
months into the worst Ebola epidemic in
history, the world is losing the battle to contain
it.” She said that aid charities and West African
governments did not have the capacity to stem
the outbreak and needed intervention by
foreign states.
Slamming what she called “a global coalition of
inaction,” Liu called for the urgent dispatch of
field hospitals with isolation wards and mobile
medical laboratories.
MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders,
said that biological disaster response teams
were needed to support West Africa’s buckling
healthcare systems.