The U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, that the country would allocate an additional $267 million to combat the Ebola epidemic affecting the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“To date, the United States government has provided $887 million in direct health and humanitarian assistance to combat the outbreak of the Ebola epidemic,” according to a State Department statement, which emphasizes that Washington is the largest contributor to the effort.
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U.S. diplomats took the opportunity to call on “countries with the means to share the burden” and to ensure the response is commensurate with the circumstances of this “urgent” health crisis.
In late August, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, appealed for $1.1 billion to fund an aid plan to combat the pandemic.
The epidemic is not subsiding but is “shifting,” the NGO Doctors Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) recently warned.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is facing the 17th Ebola outbreak in its history — which, within a few months, became the deadliest ever experienced by the vast Central African nation.
The outbreak, which began in the province and was officially declared—several weeks late, according to experts— has so far claimed the lives of 3,639 people out of a total of 7,541 laboratory-confirmed infections, according to the most recent figures from the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) in Kinshasa.
Source: KYPE
