FOREIGN minister Julie Bishop has expressed concern about the Ebola virus outbreak at a UN Security Council meeting she chaired on the disease.
“THE Security Council reiterates its grave concern about the unprecedented extent of the Ebola outbreak in Africa, which constitutes a threat to international peace and security, and the impact of the Ebola virus on West Africa, in particular, Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone,” Ms Bishop said overnight in New York.
She also warned that gains made to date could easily be reversed. The debate came as an Australian company prepared to open a treatment facility in Sierra Leone, with doctors likely to treat their first patients within weeks. But Labor’s Matt Thistlethwaite says the government is being hypocritical for saying one thing in New York but doing the opposite in Australia. Labor and non-government organisations have long been calling for specialist teams to be sent to West Africa “For months now the government has been ignoring those pleas,” he told Sky News. “It’s taken them too long to take action on this issue.” The head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) warned the meeting by videoconference link that there was still “a long battle ahead of us”. Fighting the epidemic “is going to require a tremendous increase in resources on the ground, in a dispersed geographic area”, Anthony Banbury said. Last week, 533 new cases were reported in Sierra Leone, the highest weekly tally since the outbreak hit there, although recent data has shown a decline in cases in Liberia, the worst-hit country, and Guinea. Aspen Medical was awarded $20 million in federal funding earlier this month to run a 100-bed British-built military field hospital in Sierra Leone. On Friday co-founder Dr Andrew Walker said construction was expected to be completed by the end of November.