The U.S. Agency for International
Development ordered 5,000 body bags from a Florida company last month as
part of its planned response to an outbreak of the Ebola virus in
western Africa.
And as President Obama prepares to enlarge
America’s aid to affected countries, a company that makes protective
clothing says the State Department, which oversees USAID, has invited
bids for 160,000 hazmat suits.
The body-bag purchase came on August 19,
just after the World Health Organization said the epidemic had killed
1,000 people. That death toll is now greater than 2,400.
The size of the contracts indicates how
seriously governments are taking the threat, especially considering that
all 5,000 body bags were destined only for Liberia – one of three
countries whose citizens have been hammered with new disease cases and
paralyzed with fear.
And the purchase says nothing about what resources might be coming as part of other nations’ contributions.
Barack Obama will travel to Atlanta on
Tuesday for a briefing with experts from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. His chief spokesman said Monday that the president will
announce new levels of support from the U.S. to fight the disease.
The CDC has begun to warn health care
workers and hospital administrators to be on the lookout for potential
Ebola cases. ‘Now is the time to prepare,’ reads part of a six-page
‘checklist’ being distributed nationwide.
The agency has already deployed about 100
of its own workers to Africa, White House press secretary Josh Earnest
told reporters during his daily briefing.
‘This is, if not the largest, among the largest deployments of CDC personnel – ever,’ he said.
America, Earnest added, ‘has a unique
responsibility to step up in the midst of an international crisis. … Our
doctors and scientists are some of the best in the world.’
The federal government as a whole has
allocated $100 million in financing and other resources to assist what
has become a continent-wide race against the clock to stamp out a crafty
pathogen before it can spread beyond hope of containment.
That level of support, about one-sixth of
what the WHO estimates is needed, ‘underscores just how extraordinarily
serious the administration believes this issue is,’ said Earnest.
Obama’s visit will add a new sense of urgency, and more aid to the countries where the threat is the more dire.
‘I do anticipate that we’ll have some
additional announcements to make’ on Tuesday, Earnest said, ‘about
additional commitments we’re making.’
USAID’s
body-bag purchase was
signed August 19, a $32,500 contract with a Florida packaging company,
earmarked ‘for the USAID/OFDA response to the Ebola crisis in west
Africa.’
OFDA is the agency’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance.
Buying the body bags, however, was just the first step. USAID inked
another contact on August 27 ‘for the transport of 5,000 body bags from the vendor’s facility to Liberia.’
Flying them there from warehouses in Illinois and California cost another $57,144.
It’s not clear whether the State
Department’s purchase of 160,000 hazmat suits is intended to be
delivered all at once, or to which countries they will be delivered.
But
Lakeland Industries,
based in Ronkonkoma, New York, reported on Friday that ‘the U.S. State
Department alone’ has solicited bids ‘for 160,000 suits.’
‘We encourage all protective apparel
companies to increase their manufacturing capacity for sealed seam
garments,’ the company said in a press release, ‘so that our industry
can do its part in addressing this threat to global health.’
