A day after the UN World Health Organization (WHO) warned of an “exponential” rise in Ebola cases in Liberia, the country’s defense minister went before the Security Council to say that Ebola is now a “serious threat” to Liberia’s existence as the virus “spreads like wildfire”.

“The deadly Ebola virus has caused a disruption of the normal functioning of our state,” said Defense Minister Brownie Samukai told the UN Security Council.

Liberia is a poor country that is still recovering from two devastating civil wars ending eleven years ago.  Samukai told the representatives from the developed nations that his country lacks “infrastructure, logistical capacity, professional expertise and financial resources to effectively address this disease”.  And he worried that the international response to the crisis facing West Africa was “less than robust”. 

US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power agreed, telling reporters after the briefing, “I don’t think anybody can say right now that the international response to the Ebola outbreak is sufficient.”

The UN’s envoy to Liberia Karin Landgren says health workers there are working without proper equipment, training, and pay.  160 health workers contracted Ebola and half of them had died of the “latter-day plague”

Landgren concurred on the urgency of the situation saying, “Liberians are facing their gravest threat since their war.”

The Ebola outbreak began in Guinea a few months ago, and spread to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, and Senegal.  Officially, at least 2,296 people are dead, and more than half of the new infections have occurred in the last three and a half weeks.

The WHO said that 14 out of Liberia’s 15 counties have reported Ebola cases.  As soon as a treatment center opens, it is filled and people have to be turned away – suggesting that there are many unreported cases on there that will result in more and more infections.

Meanwhile, another American aid worker infected with Ebola has arrived at Emory University Medical Center in Atlanta for treatment.  This doctor became infected in Sierra Leone, and was airlifted back in a special isolation airplane as was used in the cases of three previous patients.  The identity of this aid worker has not yet been revealed.