A PETITION demanding the federal government deploy military aid and logistical support to west Africa has gathered more than 37,000 signatures.
PERTH woman Ali Readhead, who organised the online petition, has been working with the Health Ministry in Sierra Leone, one of the countries worst hit by the deadly virus.
Ms Readhead says she fears the response from governments has already been “too little, too late”. While the US and United Kingdom, and even Cuba, have sent health and military personnel in their collective thousands, Australia has only offered financial support of $18 million to help combat an outbreak that has so far killed almost 4500 people. “Unfortunately, Australia isn’t one of these countries,” Ms Readhead said from London. “Despite having been told repeatedly that ‘boots on the ground’ are what is required to control the outbreak, more so than financial resources, the Australian government continues to refuse to send in military support.” Ms Readhead said funding and supplies were not reaching the affected countries fast enough. “What we need is international health workers on the ground now.” The petition, addressed to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, calls on the government to deploy military aid, including engineers, logisticians and medics to Sierra Leone. It emerged last month that Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma had written directly to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, making a desperate plea for Australia to scale up its response to the Ebola crisis. In the letter, Mr Koroma says his country is counting on Australia and specifically requests military aid. The prime minister’s office has refused to confirm whether it has responded to Mr Koroma’s plea for help. The federal government says it has not yet been able to secure a commitment from other countries to treat Australian health workers should they become infected. Mr Abbott on Thursday repeated his position that it would be irresponsible of an Australian government to order Australian personnel into a dangerous situation without having an effective risk mitigation strategy in place. “At the moment there is no way of doing that,” he said in Melbourne.