MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Liberian lawmakers on Friday rejected a
proposal to grant President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the power to further restrict
movement and public gatherings and to confiscate property in the fight against
Ebola. One legislator said such a law would have turned Liberia into a police
state.
The
proposal's defeat came as the World Health Organization once again raised the
death toll attributed to the Ebola outbreak. The Geneva-based U.N. agency said
that 4,033 confirmed, probable or suspected Ebola deaths have now been
recorded.
All but nine
of them were in the three worst-affected countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and
Guinea. Eight of the rest were in Nigeria, with one patient dying in the United
States.
On Friday,
David Nabarro, the U.N. special envoy for Ebola, said the number of Ebola cases
is probably doubling every three-to-four weeks and the response needs to be 20
times greater than it was at the beginning of October.
He warned
the U.N. General Assembly that without the mass mobilization of the world to
support the affected countries in West Africa, "it will be impossible to
get this disease quickly under control, and the world will have to live with
the Ebola virus forever."
Nabarro said
the U.N. knows what needs to be done to catch up to and overtake Ebola's rapid
advance "and together we're going to do it."
"And
our commitment to all of you is to achieve it within a matter of months — a few
months," he said.
The defeat
of Sirleaf's proposal in the House of Representatives came as U.S. military
forces worked on building a hospital for stricken health workers in Liberia,
the country that has been hit hardest by the epidemic.
"The
House felt it was not necessary to grant her additional measures," Speaker
Alex Tyler told The Associated Press. He spoke after lawmakers rejected the
president's proposal to give her further power to restrict movement and public
gatherings and the authority to appropriate property "without payment of
any kind or any further judicial process" to combat Ebola.
Liberia has
recorded 2,316 deaths during the Ebola outbreak, according to the World Health
Organization — more than any other country. Sirleaf's government imposed a
three-month state of emergency beginning Aug. 6, but critics have accused the
Nobel Peace Prize winner's approach to fighting Ebola since then as ineffective
and heavy handed.
"I see
a kind of police state creeping in," lawmaker Bhofal Chambers, a one-time
Sirleaf supporter, said before the vote.
In August, a
quarantine of Monrovia's largest shantytown sparked unrest and was derided as
counterproductive before being lifted. The Committee to Protect Journalists has
accused Sirleaf's government of trying to silence media outlets criticizing its
conduct.
Meanwhile,
the U.S. military was rushing to set up a 25-bed hospital to treat health
workers who may contract Ebola. Rear Adm. Scott Giberson, the acting U.S.
Deputy Surgeon General, said the facility would be ready within weeks.
"We're
in training right now. As you may know, not everybody is fully experienced in
seeing Ebola related care of patients," Giberson said. "We have
experience deploying in lots of medical settings. However, this is
unique."
The arrival
of 100 U.S. Marines on Thursday brings to just over 300 the total number of
American troops in Liberia. The Marines and their aircraft will help with air
transportation and ferrying of supplies, overcoming road congestion in Monrovia
and bad roads outside the capital, said Capt. R. Carter Langston, spokesman for
the U.S. mission. A priority will be transporting building materials to
treatment unit sites. The U.S. has said it will oversee construction of 17
treatment units with 100 beds each.
The 101st
Airborne Division is expected to deploy 700 troops by late October. The U.S.
may send up to 4,000 soldiers to help with the Ebola crisis, though officials
have stressed that number could change depending on needs.
In a call
with reporters on Wednesday, USAID assistant administrator Nancy Lindborg said
six treatment units were operational in Liberia. She said about 250 beds had
come online in the last ten days or so, and that beds would come online in
waves until the end of November.
In Mali, a
health ministry spokesman said two more people had begun participating in the
first phase of a study for a possible Ebola vaccine. Mali has not had any cases
of Ebola, but it borders the outbreak zone. University of Maryland researchers
announced Thursday that the first study of a possible vaccine was underway, and
that three health care workers in Mali had received the experimental shots
developed by the U.S. government.
"Today,
we are at five people vaccinated," health ministry spokesman Markatie Daou
said. "We envision vaccinating between 20 and 40 people for this first
phase and the results are expected next month."
Spanish
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, meanwhile, visited the Madrid hospital where a
nursing assistant infected with Ebola is being treated.
Teresa
Romero was scheduled to start receiving the experimental anti-Ebola drug ZMapp,
which is in extremely short supply worldwide, a spokeswoman for Madrid's
regional health agency said on condition of anonymity because of agency rules.
Romero
contracted Ebola in Madrid while helping treat a Spanish missionary who became
infected in West Africa, and later died. She is the first person known outside
of West Africa to have caught the disease in the current outbreak.
Rajoy
praised Spanish health care workers and said the World Health Organization
thinks "the risk is very low that this disease will spread in the
future" in Spain and Europe.
__
Corey-Boulet
reported from Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Associated Press journalists Wade Williams
in Monrovia, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Ciaran Giles in Madrid,
and Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali, contributed to this report.
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