Resentment simmers in Liberia’s quarantined town
The United States needs to do more to help control West Af­rica’s deadly Ebola outbreak to stop it becom­ing a global crisis that could one day threaten Americans, President Barack Obama said in an interview.
Obama told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the outbreak, which has killed 2,100 people in African five countries, was unlikely to spread to the Unit­ed States in the short term. But he added there could be implications if Washington and other powers did not send urgently needed equipment, public health workers and oth­er supplies to the region.
“If we don’t make that ef­fort now, and this spreads not just through Africa but other parts of the world, there’s the prospect then that the virus mutates. It becomes more eas­ily transmittable,” he said in the interview broadcast yes­terday. “And then it could be a serious danger to the United States,” he added. The United Nations said last week $600 million in supplies were need­ed. “We’re going to have to get U.S. military assets just to set up, for example, isolation units and equipment there, to provide security for public health workers surging from around the world,” Obama said in the interview. “If we do that, then it’s still going to be months before this problem is controllable in Africa,” he said.
Meanwhile, resentment simmers in Liberia’s ‘Ebola jail town.’ Trapped since of­ficials placed them in quar­antine two weeks ago, the residents of Dolo Town are becoming increasingly resent­ful over their incarceration in Liberia’s open “Ebola jail”.
Around 17,000 increas­ingly hungry residents in the settlement, close to the inter­national airport, are forced to queue for rations of rice while soldiers blockade them in at gunpoint.
The usually-packed streets are almost empty, as residents observe quarantine measures in a bid to halt a particularly severe outbreak of a virus which has killed 2,000 west Africans, half of them in Libe­ria. Dolo Town, 75 kilometres (47 miles) east of Monrovia, was placed in lockdown on August 20 at the same time as West Point, a slum in the capital. While the West Point lockdown caused riots, peo­ple have largely accepted the measures to contain them in Dolo Town. But their patience is wearing thin.
Meanwhile, an American missionary doctor, Dr. Rick Sacra, infected with the deadly virus, has improved slightly while being treated in Omaha, Nebraska, his wife said.
“Rick is very sick and weak, but slightly improved from when he arrived yesterday,” Debbie Sacra said at the week­end in a press release issued by SIM, the Christian mission organization for which Sacra works. “He asked for some­thing to eat and had a little chicken soup.”Debbie Sacra and the couple’s 22-year-old son visited him for 25 minutes by a video link at Nebraska Medical Center, according to the press release.
Meanwhile, Sierra Leone plans a three-day nationwide lockdown in an effort to halt an Ebola outbreak that has killed hundreds, a move that a leading medical charity said at the weekend will not help.
People will not be allowed to leave their homes for three days under the plan, set to start September 19. The lockdown is being billed as a predomi­nantly social campaign rather than a medical one, in which volunteers will go door-to-door to talk to people.

Ebola: US, other powers must help West Africa else…, warns Obama