IMF unblocks cash as desperate west Africa awaits Ebola aid

The International Monetary Fund fast-tracked $130 million in aid to fight the Ebola epidemic after the governments of the worst-hit countries in west Africa said they were desperately counting on promises of global aid to be backed up with cash. The IMF’s executive board said it wanted to help Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone respond to the rapidly spreading outbreak that has killed some 3,000 people since December. US President Barack Obama said west Africa had been “overwhelmed” by the crisis. “Public health systems are near collapse,” Obama told a global health summit at the White House. He warned that the disease was causing economic growth to slow in the region and putting huge strain on governments. The president called on the world to do more to prevent such epidemics.

We have got to make sure we never see a tragedy on this scale again.

U.S. President Barack Obama

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday it expected to begin small-scale use of two experimental Ebola vaccines in West Africa early next year and in the meantime, transfusions of survivors’ blood may offer the best hope of treatment. WHO is working with pharmaceutical companies and regulators to accelerate the use of a range of potential treatments to fight the disease that has no cure, a senior WHO official said. GlaxoSmithKline has begun clinical trials of its vaccine in the United States and Britain, to be followed by a trial starting in Mali next week, while NewLink vaccine trials are about to start in the United States and Germany, said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director-general.

This will not be a mass vaccination campaign, let’s be clear about that because the quantity which will be available doesn’t make this possible.

Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director-general

Health ebola