The Ebola outbreak in West Africa was officially declared in late March 2014. In the following months, civilian health agencies tried to contain the virus which had spread across borders from Guinea to Liberia and Sierra Leone. And by August, as the number of cases continued to rise, the outbreak was declared a public health emergency of international concern.
Then in September, coinciding with a United Nations Security Council resolution on Ebola, United States President Barack Obama announced that 3,000 American military personnel would be deployed to the Ebola-affected region under Operation United Assistance.
“Our forces are going to bring their expertise in command and control, in logistics, in engineering. And our Department of Defense is better at that, our Armed Services are better at that than any organization on Earth,” Obama said from the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.