The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that we need more than $430 million to end the Ebola menace. The plan sets a goal of reversing the trend in new cases within two months, and stopping all transmission in six to nine months. It requires funding by governments, development banks, the private sector and in-kind contributions, according to the document obtained by Bloomberg News.
“There is reason to be concerned about whether the proposed resources would be adequate,” said Barry Bloom, a public health professor at Harvard University who also questioned whether the funds would be made available face enough, and whether the organization’s latest plan would ensure the expertise from WHO that is needed.
WHO criticized The European Commission and aid groups including Doctors Without Borders have criticized the WHO for a lack of leadership in coordinating the fight against the outbreak.
“It’s not a question of incompetence or complacency,” according to Morrison, who said the WHO should be able to raise the money needed. It’s the fact we’re catching up with the unknown, and its way ahead of us.
Treatment centers More than half the cost will be needed for the treatment, isolation and referral centers that are bearing the brunt of the epidemic, according to the WHO plan. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are among the world’s poorest countries, and weak health systems combined with a lack of experienced health-care workers has contributed to the epidemic, the WHO has said.
The WHO this month declared Ebola in West Africa a public health emergency of international concern. A separate outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed as many as 13 people, the government in that country said on Monday.
In West Africa, more than 240 health care workers have been infected and 120 have died, the agency said in a statement yesterday. Among them is Abraham Borbor, the deputy chief medical officer of Liberia’s John F. Kennedy Medical Center, who died despite being treated with Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.’s experimental ZMapp medicine, the nation’s information minister said.
Experimental drug Borbor was one of three Liberian health-care workers being treated with ZMapp, the same drug that was used on two American aid workers who were evacuated to the US after being infected in Liberia.
Clearly, a massively scaled and coordinated international response is needed to support affected and at-risk countries. The document has been shared with the WHO’s partners for comment and will be published once their feedback has been received, Chaib said.
The final document will include a country- by-country plan for dealing with the outbreak, she said.
