PREVIEW
Concerns grow over the gap between pledged and disbursed funding to address the epidemic
International organisations’ response to the Ebola emergency outbreak appears to be gathering pace in terms of funding and treatment. A week after the European Commission said that it would fund the response to the Ebola outbreak with a €493 million financial aid package, the White House confirmed that it is seeking more than US$1.4 billion in new funds from Congress to address the Ebola virus outbreak. That could lead to Washington offering a large financial inducement to Kenya to complete the building of a quarantine facility in central Kenya for United States nationals who had been in contact with the virus (AC Vol 67 No 12, Region prepares for a crisis it can’t afford).
Last week, Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale said that construction of the facility at an airbase near Nanyuki had been halted after the High Court in Nairobi declared him to be in contempt after he ignored a court ruling to suspend construction pending a court case which asserts that the government’s decision to allow the facility was unconstitutional (Dispatches 1/6/26,Nairobi pushes back against Trump’s ‘America First’ health deal).
Meanwhile, on 24 June, the World Health Organization announced two trials of experimental anti-Ebola drugs to combat the fast-moving outbreak (Dispatches 25/5/26, Ebola outbreak puts vaccine ambitions on trial).
The US Trump administration appears to have changed tack on this. One of the drugs is US-made: the White House had previously stated that any Ebola medicines would only be available to US nationals. France confirmed this week the first case of Ebola in the EU after a doctor returning to France from a humanitarian mission in eastern Congo-Kinshasa tested positive.
In response, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) urged EU health ministries to be extra vigilant and ‘continue strengthening their preparedness’ for the possible spread of the Ebola virus though the ECDC insists that there is still only a ‘low risk’ of this.
However, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has complained that funds have been slow to be disbursed and that around 10% of the $910m in pledged funding has been delivered.
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