World Bank officials meets Veep over a $100m Ebola support

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Vice President Kwesi Amissah and Dr Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group

The World Bank has pledged additional $100 million to fill the critical funding gap needed in the Ebola response to speed up the deployment of foreign health workers to the three worst affected countries.

World Bank officials meets Veep over a $100m Ebola support
World Bank officials meets Veep over a $100m Ebola support

The additional grant increases the World Bank?s funding for the Ebola fight over the last three months in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to more than $500 million.

Dr Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group announced this at a news conference on Ebola with Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur at the Flagstaff House in Accra.

West African and global development leaders have appealed for a massive coordinated reinforcement of international health teams to the three worst affected countries in order to contain the epidemic.

The current Ebola outbreak in the Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is the most widespread in history of the disease and has caused significant mortality, with a reported case fatality rate of about 71 per cent.

The World Health Organisation has reported that out of a total of 13,703 suspected cases by October 25, 2014, there have been 4,922 deaths.

Dr Kim commended Ghana for playing an important role to host the UN team in Accra and helping to set up a humanitarian air bridge into the three Ebola-hit countries.

He said history would record the importance of what Ghana has done by keeping open an important link to the three countries at a time when many countries around the world have closed their borders.

He said current estimates by the UN indicate that about 5,000 international medical, training and support personnel are needed in the three countries over the coming months to respond to the Ebola outbreak.

Dr Kim stated that the health workers are needed to treat and care for patients, boost local health capacity, manage Ebola treatment centres and resume essential health services for non-Ebola conditions.

He said the African Union (AU) through its Commission?s Chairperson, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma has indicated the Union?s effort to deploy 2,000 trained health workers from African countries to the affected nations.

He stated that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has also announced that 600 health workers in that country have volunteered to work in the affected areas.

Dr Kim commended the AU and President Kenyatta for their leadership role in setting a firm targets and urged many more African countries to send their health workers to the frontline of the epidemic.

Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur stated that Ghana has become the focal point for the UN effort for the Ebola emergency because the people in Ghana has felt since independence ?that we do not just seek the welfare of the people of the country but to use our position to look for the well-being of the African people?.

He said it was in this spirit that President John Dramani Mahama offered the country?s territory to the UN for Ebola emergency response.

He expressed the hope that intervention by the World Bank and other UN bodies would not only look at treatment and management of Ebola cases but the impact that the disease have had on the economies of the three affected countries.

 

GNA

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