By Anait Miridzhanian and Sfundo Parakozov
DAKAR/JOHANNESBURG, June 25 (Reuters) – Africa’s top public health agency said on Thursday that funding needed to tackle the continent’s Ebola outbreak was three times higher than an earlier estimate, and now stands at $1.4 billion.
Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director-General Jean Kaseya said the new estimate was based on discussions with experts from Congo’s government and United Nations agencies.
The outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola has infected over 1,100 people in Congo and 20 in neighbouring Uganda, reaching the highest first-month total of any episode of the disease.
Unlike the earlier funding needs estimate of $518 million, given on June 5 as part of a joint plan with the World Health Organization, the new figure includes money needed for humanitarian relief measures.
Kaseya said that so far there had been about $910 million in funding pledges, but that only 13% of that had been released.
“If we don’t have this $1.4 billion and if we don’t resolve the humanitarian issue, we will not stop this outbreak,” he told an online press conference.
Humanitarian conditions are worsening in Congo’s Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak, Kaseya said.
Another worry is that it is difficult for health workers to access displacement camps where there are Ebola cases, complicating contact-tracing, he added.
On Wednesday, WHO officials said Congo’s Ebola outbreak was still outpacing response efforts. They flagged the risks to health workers operating in a region scarred by decades of war where local people are often deeply distrustful of officials and outsiders.
(Reporting by Anait Miridzhanian and Sfundo Parakozov; Editing by Bate Felix, Alexander Winning and Bill Berkrot)
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