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Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations are not new to the Army and the Department of Defense (DOD). We gained experience from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. In the response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, President Barack Obama announced Operation United Assistance in September 2014, allowing the military to support the United States Agency for International Development. This was the largest role the military had assumed in combating the spread of a disease or virus. The fight against Ebola was on.
The DOD made critical contributions to the fight against the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa. Chief among these was bringing expertise in mission command, logistics, and engineering to assist in quickly getting health workers and medical supplies into West Africa. This Center for Army Lessons Learned bulletin is the result of many interviews and data collection activities with the U.S. Army Africa (USARAF) staff. It is not meant to be totally comprehensive, but rather to serve as a quick and easy-to-read guide for follow-on units focusing on selected key areas.
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