President Obama announced Wednesday that all but 100 of the U.S. troops stationed in West Africa to fight Ebola would return home by the end of April.
“We have risen to the challenge. Remember, there was no small amount of skepticism about our chances,” Obama said from the White House, joined on stage by Ebola survivors and first responders. “And if we’re honest, some stoked those fears.”
Though the U.S. military presence in West Africa will wind down, thousands of American civilians will remain in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to fight the deadly disease.
Currently, 1,300 Americans troops are still in West Africa as part of the broader U.S. Ebola response.
There were 1,000 new suspected, probable and confirmed Ebola cases a week in October, compared with roughly 150 now, the White House said.
It’s a far cry from 2014, when Obama was forced to ratchet down concerns about a possible Ebola outbreak on U.S. soil. He designated Ron Klain, Vice President Joe Biden’s former chief of staff, as his so-called Ebola czar. Klain’s tenure is now almost finished.
However, health officials caution that much work remains to beat the virus in Africa, a concern that Obama acknowledged on Wednesday.
“We’re shifting our focus from fighting the epidemic to now extinguishing it,” he said.
“Our focus is now on getting to zero,” the president explained. “Because as long as there is even one case of Ebola that’s active out there, risk still exists.”
