EU funding raised as Ebola fears spread
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FEARS that the west African Ebola outbreak could spread to Europe grew yesterday, with the European Union allocating extra spending and a leading medical charity warning the epidemic was out of control.
Doctors Without Borders said the crisis gripping Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone can only get worse and could not rule out it spreading.
The International Civil Aviation Organization has met global health officials on implementing measures to halt the spread of the disease, as the pan-African airline ASKY suspended all flights to and from the capitals of Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Meanwhile the EU allocated an extra 2 million euros (US$2.7 million) to fight the outbreak, bringing its total funding to 3.9 million euros.
“The level of contamination is extremely worrying and we need to scale up our action before more lives are lost,” said EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva.
The bloc has deployed experts to help victims and try to limit contagion but Georgieva called for a “sustained effort from the international community to help West Africa deal with this menace.”
In Britain, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond was to chair a meeting of the government’s crisis management committee to assess the situation.
One person in England has been tested for the disease but the test proved negative.
Bart Janssens, MSF’s director of operations, warned there was no overarching vision of how to tackle the outbreak, in an interview with La Libre Belgique newspaper.
“This epidemic is unprecedented, absolutely out of control and the situation can only get worse, because it is still spreading,” he said.
Since March, there have been 1,201 cases of Ebola and 672 deaths in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ebola can kill victims within days, causing fever and muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in some cases, organ failure and unstoppable bleeding.
Janssens said: “It’s up to the World Health Organization and to government to deploy and organize the capacity and effort required to start to control this epidemic.”
Togo-based ASKY said it halted all flights to and from Liberia and Sierra Leone following the death of a male passenger who had traveled from Liberia to Nigeria via the Togolese capital Lome.
The 40-year-old died in Lagos on Friday in Nigeria’s first confirmed death from Ebola.
The virus hitchhiking aboard the airline could lead to new flight restrictions, the world aviation agency said.
“Until now (the virus) had not impacted commercial aviation, but now we’re affected,” ICAO secretary-general Raymond Benjamin said.
“We have to act quickly.”
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