Fighting Ebola

The world community has known of the Ebola virus disease, more commonly called just Ebola, since it first appeared in a remote region near the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976. In previous outbreaks, Ebola has been confined to remote areas in which there was little contact outside the villages at which it appeared. Unfortunately, this outbreak, now an epidemic, spread from village to an international center for regional trade and spread into urban areas in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia that are crowded, with limited medical services and limited resident trust of government. The unprecedented west African Ebola epidemic has not only killed more than 5,000 people with more than 14,000 others known to be affected, this situation has skewed the planning for how to deal with the outbreak. Today's hearing is intended to take testimony from nongovernmental organizations providing services on the ground currently in the affected countries, especially Liberia, so we can better determine how proposed actions are being implemented.