Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, right, the Joint Forces Command-United Assistance commander, elbow-bumps Sgt. 1st Class Roderick Davis, the logistics section NCO in charge, 129th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 101st Sustainment Brigade, Task Force Lifeliner, during a visit to Monrovia, Liberia, Nov. 6, 2014. The elbow bump is being used throughout Liberia to replace the common handshake greeting to help prevent the spread of disease. (Mary Rose Mittlesteadt/U.S. Army)
WASHINGTON — The need for U.S. military support in the battle against Ebola in West Africa is smaller than expected, officials say.
On Wednesday, the general in charge of the operation said a planned troop deployment to Africa was dropping by about 1,000 servicemembers — a 25 percent cut. And the Defense Department official in charge of special operations told Congress on Thursday that DOD is now being asked to build 12 Ebola treatment units around the country, down from the 17 initially planned.
There are now 2,200 troops, some from each service branch, in Liberia, expected to top out just short of 3,000 in mid-December, said Army Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, commander of Operation United Assistance, which began in September.
The Pentagon had planned to send about 4,000 troops to Africa to help deal with the largest Ebola outbreak in history. The outbreak may now be waning in Liberia, but Ebola continues to kill there and elsewhere, with a death toll that recently topped 5,000, according to the World Health Organization.
The bulk of American troops are deploying to help with engineering and logistical demands, functions which U.S. officials discovered Liberians were better able to handle than expected, Volesky told reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference on Wednesday from the capital, Monrovia.
“What we found working with [the U.S. Agency for International Development] and the government of Liberia was that there was a lot of capacity here that we didn’t know about before, and so that enabled us to reduce the forces that we thought we originally had to bring,” he said.
USAID had already identified and begun working with capable local contractors able to help construct treatment facilities, Volesky said. Liberian troops, meanwhile, did most of the work building the first of the Ebola treatment units, which are planned for completion by the end of the year, he said.
Speaking before House legislators Thursday during a hearing on the American response to the Ebola outbreak, Michael Lumpkin, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said DOD was now planning only 12 Ebola treatment units.
A defense official at the Pentagon said the number was scaled back from 17 in consultation with the Liberian government and USAID, the lead U.S. agency on Ebola in Africa.
So far no U.S. troops or DOD civilians have shown any signs of infection, which Volesky said was a result of effective training in personal protection from the virus both before and during the deployment. Commanders are keeping close watch over their troops, he said.
You won’t see soldiers roaming all over Liberia; we’ve got it very controlled,” he said. “They go places where there’s a mission, and we just make sure that we’re following all those protocols.”
Over 80 airmen, sailors, Marines and soldiers who were due to return to Virginia on Thursday after a deployment to Liberia will spend 21 days in quarantine at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., being monitored for symptoms, the Pentagon announced Thursday.
U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Deborah R. Malac said during the teleconference Wednesday that while the number of cases is still rising, Ebola infection rates in the country have dropped significantly. Just 45 people throughout the country became infected Tuesday, compared to about 100 contracting the virus daily in Monrovia alone at the height of the outbreak, she said.
President Barack Obama’s decision to send the U.S. military sparked an influx of international nongovernmental organizations willing to help fight the disease, she said during the Wednesday teleconference.
“The presence of the U.S. military and the capacity that they bring to the table has been a real confidence builder for all of these NGO partners who are now stepping forward in response to help us with this effort,” Malac said.
Lumpkin on Thursday told Congress that U.S. military participation was galvanizing the battle against Ebola in West Africa, and filling a crucial gap while the rest of the world tries gear up a response.
“The Ebola epidemic we face truly is a national security issue,” he said. “Absent our government’s coordinated response in West Africa, the virus spreads (and) brings the risk of more cases here in the United States.”
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