President Barack Obama listens to Dr. Nancy Sullivan, Senior Investigator, Chief, Biodefense Research Section, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during a NIH tour of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014, in Bethesda, Md.
Obama spoke at the National Institutes for Health in Maryland, laying out recent gains in domestic preparedness for combatting the disease while calling on Congress to approve $6.18 billion in emergency funding, which will be used to conduct research and help prevent the spread of the virus.
“The urgency remains because if we are going to solve this problem for ourselves we have to solve it in west Africa as well,” the president said. “We cannot beat Ebola without more funding. That’s why I am calling on Congress to approve our emergency funding request to fight this disease.”
“I’m calling on Congress to approve our emergency funding request to fight this disease.” —President Obama #Ebola pic.twitter.com/waIFFNyACz
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 2, 2014
Despite Obama’s call for additional funding, the White House also lauded the gains made across the country, highlighting the number of hospital beds that grew from eight to 53 at 35 different facilities across the country in the past two months.
The map below shows the location of the facilities, with a blue mark designating the three sites prior to October that were able to treat patients.
In addition to expanding treatment capabilities, the government also increased the country’s Ebola testing capacity from 13 labs in 13 states as of August to 42 labs in 36 states. Phase One of a promising vaccine’s clinical trials have also begun, making way for larger clinical trials in West Africa in the near future.
According to the NIH the first safety study of an Ebola vaccine candidate in the U.S. found no serious side effects.
CDC Rapid #Ebola Preparedness (REP) teams have assessed more than 50 facilities in 15 states and D.C. so far. pic.twitter.com/OxNUQs4aQ4
— CDC (@CDCgov) December 2, 2014
In addition to the gains domestically, the White House outlined the response in areas of West Africa which have shouldered the weight of the most recent Ebola outbreak, noting the U.S. had made “marked strides in overseas response” by deploying civilian and military personnel, constructing Ebola treatment units and a hospital in Liberia for healthcare workers, funding medical teams, training of health care workers and raising $2 million in aid since September.
To date, 16,000 people have been infected in the most recent outbreak of the disease, of whom nearly 7,000 have died, according to numbers released by the World Health Organization on Friday.
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