[Déclaration du Dr Joanne Liu, Présidente de Médecins sans Frontières,]

[devant les Etats membres de l'ONU
New York, 02 septembre 2014]

(Joanne Liu) Mr. Deputy Secretary General, Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates,

thank you for this opportunity to brief the Member States on the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history,

the world is losing the battle to contain it,

leaders all failing to come to grip with this transnational threat.

Ebola treatment centers are reduced to places where people go to die alone,

where little more than palliative care is offered.

In Sierra Leone, infectious bodies are rotting in the streets.

Rather than building new Ebola care centers in Liberia,

we are forced to build crematoria.

Médecins sans Frontières has been ringing alarm bells for months

but the response has been too late, too little.

The outbreak began six months ago

but was only declared public health emergency of international concern on August 8.

Many of the Member States represented here today

have invested heavily in biological threat response.

You have a political and humanitarian responsibility

to immediately utilize these capabilities in Ebola-affected countries.

To curb the epidemic, it is imperative that states immediately

deploy civilian and military assets with expertise in bio-hazard containment.

UN Member States cannot focus solely on measures to protect their own borders.

Only by battling the epidemic at its roots can we stem it.

This is a transnational crisis with social, economic and security implication

for the African continent.

It is <i>your</i> historic responsibility to act now.

We cannot cut off the affected countries and hope this epidemic will simply burn out.

To put out this fire, we must run into the burning building.

Thank you.

[Parfois, il faut plus que des soins.
Médecins sans frontières, Ärzte ohne Grenzen]

[MSF sauve aussi des vies <i>en prenant la parole</i>.]

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