(Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama told Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf that while the Ebola crisis in western Africa has receded the U.S. will continue attempts to fully supress the epidemic and help Liberia’s economy recover.
The two were meeting at the White House Friday to discuss work to keep Ebola at bay and to help Liberia rebound from the ravages of the virus, which also struck in Guinea and Sierra Leone.
“We’re very interested to hear how we can be helpful,” Obama said at the start of the meeting in the Oval Office. “We know that your job is not yet done, but it shows what can be accomplished when you’ve got strong international partners on the ground.”
Johnson Sirleaf said the medical aid and U.S. military personnel who were sent to the region sent “a strong message to the Liberian people that the United States was with us.” While the number of new Ebola cases has declined, “we all remain under threat.”
The Liberian leader visited Washington as her country recovers from an Ebola epidemic that killed more than 3,600 people there last year. In a speech Wednesday to members of Congress, she recalled making personal phone calls to lawmakers last August begging for help to stem Ebola.
By the end of April, only about 100 of the 2,800 U.S. troops that had been deployed to help with the Ebola fight will remain in western Africa.
Liberia is still emerging from the economic freeze that Ebola brought. Annual economic growth in Liberia fell to less than 1 percent last year compared with a projected 5.9 percent because of Ebola, Johnson Sirleaf has said.
On Feb. 22, she lifted the curfew she’d imposed during the epidemic and reopened international borders that had been closed.
The leaders of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the three countries that bore the brunt of the Ebola epidemic, this month set a target to have no infections within 60 days.
To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington atagreilingkea@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Gordon atcgordon39@bloomberg.net Joe Sobczyk, Michael Shepard
No comments:
Post a Comment