Global Health – PBS NewsHour

The United States will offer 3,000 troops and financial help to health care systems in West Africa that are overwhelmed by Ebola. President Obama announced that U.S. forces will build new treatment facilities, airlift hundreds of thousands of home health kits and train and treat health care workers. Meanwhile, the WHO predicts that infections will double every three weeks. Judy Woodruff reports.

The number of deaths from the worst Ebola outbreak on record has now surpassed 2,300. To combat the epidemic, the U.S. has pledged funds, research and additional medical resources. Judy Woodruff sits down with Nancy Lindborg of the U.S. Agency for International Development for a detailed look at what the U.S. is providing.

After reaching their fifties and raising their own children, Jenny and Richard Bowen adopted 2-year-old Maya from China after learning of poor orphanage conditions for abandoned girls. Sixteen years later, the Bowens have two adopted daughters from the same region and have started a non-profit called Half the Sky to transform orphan care with the cooperation of the Chinese government. Fred de Sam Lazaro reports.

Signaling a new public health emergency, the World Health Organization warns that if polio is not completely eradicated it could become endemic again. Worldwide, 74 cases of the crippling disease have been confirmed this year, with Syria, Cameroon and Pakistan leading with the most occurrences. Jeffrey Brown learns more from Dr. Jon Andrus from the Pan American Health Organization.

In our news wrap Monday, the World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency amid outbreaks of polio across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The U.N. agency says the number of new cases last year nearly doubled to 417. Also, some landslide survivors say they haven’t received assistance after the disaster in northeastern Afghanistan killed as many as 2,700 people.

More than 100 people have died so far in the worst outbreak of the Ebola virus in years, which began in Guinea before spreading to Liberia. Now health officials are investigating possible cases in Mali and Ghana. Jeffrey Brown talks to Laurie Garrett from the Council on Foreign Relations about past outbreaks and the current challenges for containment.