Obama’s video message on Ebola: what you need to know to beat it

Here is US President Barack Obama's YouTube video on Ebola, with analysis below, in which he speaks directly to the residents of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria. Obama gives a tutorial on the world's worst outbreak of the virus, and how best to prevent, treat and beat it. MS

WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama has told West Africans that Ebola can be beaten, but cautions that it won't not be easy to stem the spread of the deadly disease.

Obama has appeared in this YouTube video to underline that it is vital to take basic precautions when dealing with those afflicted and in burying the dead to thwart infections.

"Stopping this disease won't be easy. But we know how to do it," said Obama, who feels a special kinship with Africa, owing to his ancestral ties to the continent.

"You are not alone, together we can treat those who are sick with respect and dignity.

"We can save lives, and our countries can work together to improve public health so this kind of outbreak doesn't happen again," said Obama in the video, which appears on the White House website, and was aimed especially at Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Guinea.

The president noted that Ebola could not be contracted through the air, or from sitting next to someone on a bus, but was spread through the exchange of bodily fluids, or sometimes through direct contact with the bodies of those who had died of the disease.

The head of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Frieden, said that despite tremendous efforts from the US government, and affected West African nations, the number of Ebola infections was continuing to grow.

At last count, the  Ebola outbreak has killed 1990 people and infected 3,062, according to the World Health Organisation.

"I'm afraid that over the next few weeks, those numbers are likely to increase further and significantly," Frieden said.

"We need action now to scale up the response. We know how to stop Ebola.

"The challenge is to scale it up to the massive levels needed to stop this outbreak. This is really the first epidemic of Ebola the world has ever known."

The US warnings echoed those of international medical agency Medecins Sans Frontieres, which said the world was "losing the battle" to contain Ebola, and called for a global biological disaster response to get aid and personnel to West Africa.

"Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it. Leaders are failing to come to grips with this transnational threat," MSF international president Joanne Liu told a UN briefing in New York. – © 1994-2014 Agence France-Presse