It's only money for our grandkids to pay:: Empty Ebola Clinics in Liberia Are Seen as Misstep in U.S. Relief Effort - After spending hundreds of millions of dollars and deploying nearly 3,000 troops to build Ebola treatment centers, the United States ended up creating facilities that have largely sat empty: Only 28 Ebola patients have been treated at the 11 treatment units built by the United States military.

From The New York Times:

MONROVIA, Liberia — As bodies littered the streets and the sick lay dying in front of overwhelmed clinics last year, President Obama ordered the largest American intervention ever in a global health crisis, hoping to stem the deadliest Ebola epidemic in history.

 

But after spending hundreds of millions of dollars and deploying nearly 3,000 troops to build Ebola treatment centers, the United States ended up creating facilities that have largely sat empty: Only 28 Ebola patients have been treated at the 11 treatment units built by the United States military, American officials now say.

 

Nine centers have never had a single Ebola patient.

 

Facing criticism that his reaction to the devastating epidemic had been slow and inadequate, Mr. Obama announced his signature plan in mid-September, focusing on Liberia, America’s historical ally.

 

But even before the first treatment center built by the American military opened there, the number of Ebola cases in Liberia had fallen drastically, casting doubt on the American strategy of building facilities that took months to complete.

 

The United States has spent $1.4 billion on its Ebola mission in West Africa, with most of it going to Liberia. Deploying the military cost $360 million, not including the construction, staffing and operating expenses at the treatment centers it built.

As the world’s biggest donor to the Ebola campaign, the United States also supported a wide range of important efforts, like building a new cemetery and increasing body-collection teams. But the vast majority of aid, about 90 percent, came after Ebola cases in Liberia had already begun to drop.

 

Of the 11 centers built by the American military, all but one opened after Dec. 22. By then, Ebola cases had already fallen to the point that Liberian and foreign officials were discussing the closing of treatment units built by other organizations that were no longer needed.