Region calls for quick Ebola action at UN

ACT NOW AND AVERT a global public health emergency.

That, in essence, is the urgent demand of Barbados, Jamaica and their Caribbean neighbours. It was made at the United Nations (UN) in New York at a time when the United States was seeking to tame rising domestic worries about the potential spread of the deadly Ebola epidemic to America’s shores.

CARICOM countries are asking the UN and its specialised agencies, along with rich states, to ramp up their aid to African states now bearing the full brunt of the deadly Ebola virus disease.

What the region also fears is that the outbreak of the highly contagious disease will jump from Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone and spread to the rest of Africa and to developing nations in the Caribbean, Latin America, the Pacific and the Middle East.