Global Confab On Ebola Seeks $5bn Pledges

Leaders of Ebola-hit
countries in West Africa yesterday held an international conference in Brussels, Belgium to mobilise a final push to end the outbreak of Ebola and ensure the delivery of nearly $5 billion in aid pledges.
The conference held as Sierra Leone’s vice president remains in self-imposed quarantine after one of his bodyguards died from Ebola amid a recent spike in cases following a long decline.
Liberian President,  Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Sierra Leone President, Ernest BaiKoroma and Alpha Conde of Guinea, the three countries hardest hit by the epidemic, were expectedly  joined by top officials from around the world for the EU-backed meeting.
UN Ebola envoy, David Nabarro, told a briefing on the eve of the conference, “It will be a very difficult and painstaking task.”
Nabarro said the number of new cases had declined from around 900 a week to 100, but that cases appeared to be climbing back up in the coastal regions of Sierra Leone and Guinea.
“The purpose of this conference is getting to zero” in terms of human cases, an EU official involved in the talks said .
Officials said countries around the world have so far pledged $4.9 billion to fight Ebola, with $2.4 billion disbursed until now.
“This conference is not really a pledging conference but rather an occasion to take stock to urge countries that have not yet disbursed to disburse what they have actually already pledged,” one official said.
EU officials organising the Brussels event said the conference will also focus on how to revive economic development in West Africa.
According to World Bank estimates, the countries at the centre of the Ebola epidemic are forecast to lose 12 per cent of their combined gross domestic product this year.
In addition, their health sectors have been partially wiped out by the epidemic or forced to divert resources to fighting Ebola at the expense of other diseases like measles, malaria and AIDS.
Ebola, one of the deadliest pathogens known to man, is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person showing symptoms such as fever or vomiting.