IMF to provide additional funds to counter Ebola while NGO's criticizes the G20 statement as lacking substance (Two stories, scroll down.) THE GUARDIAN Nov. 15, 2014 By Patrick Wintour
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA --The G20 has welcomed a commitment from the IMF to provide $300m (£190m) in extra funding to help fight Ebola in the three worst-affected west African countries.
The IMF money for Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia will come through “a combination of concessional loans, debt relief, and grants”, according to a statement issued by the world leaders’ summit, being held in Brisbane.
U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders gather for a group photo at the G20 summit in Brisbane November 15, 2014.Credit: Reuters/Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Pool
HOMELAND SECURITY NEWS WIRE Nov. 13, 2014 By Catherine de Fontenay Economists are being called upon to estimate the costs of the Ebola epidemic to West Africa and elsewhere. Economists, however, should also play a part in estimating the likelihood of the disease spreading. Economics is the study of incentives, and many biological models of the spread of the disease may be underestimating the impact of individual incentives.
Based on cost-benefit analysis, the potential costs of Ebola spreading are extremely high and the risks may be much higher than they are currently portrayed. Voters and donors should support greater efforts to end Ebola in West Africa. As International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde says, “real action” is needed to counter the outbreak. Without such action Ebola places the global economy at risk.
The new U.S. plan to spend $6 billion fighting Ebola has a hidden agenda that aid workers approve of: not only stamping out the epidemic in West Africa, but starting to build a health infrastructure that can prevent this kind of thing from happening again.
Liberian nurses escort a suspec ted patient into the JFK nursing center in Monrovia, Sept. 18, 2014. Ahamed Jallanzo/EPA file
President Barack Obama's $6.18 billion request is an enormous amount of money — six times what the U.S. has already committed and far more even than what the World Health Organization says is needed.
Most is going for full frontal assault on Ebola — one that hasn’t really gotten off the ground yet...
But billions are also being quietly allocated to building a health care system in the countries suffering the most — a less sexy approach that could prevent another epidemic in the future.
Top African business leaders have established an emergency fund to help countries hit by the Ebola outbreak.
A pledging meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised $28.5m to deploy at least 1,000 health workers to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.....
It is not clear why exactly the number of cases in Liberia has dipped - but it has been running an awareness campaign to advertise best health practices and install hand washing stations.
Speaking at the end of the Addis Abada meeting, African Union chairman Dlamini Zuma said the resources mobilised would be part of a longer term programme to deal with such outbreaks in the future.
The chairman of telecommunications giant Econet Wireless, Strive Masiyiwa, said that several companies had pledged money to the emergency fund - to be managed by the African Development Bank.
New York -- The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is impairing the ability of governments to raise revenues, increasing their exposure to domestic and foreign debts and may make them more dependent on aid, according to the latest study (PDF) on the socio-economic impact of the crisis carried out by the UN development agency.
Investments in kick-starting economies and long-term development urgently needed
“We need to make sure that the Ebola outbreak does not lead to socio-economic collapse,” said Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, the Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). “This crisis is already taking a toll on budgets and reducing the governments’ policy leeway to make much-needed investments in critical areas such as health and education for their citizens.” He added that the effects of the Ebola crisis will last long after the epidemic is brought under control.
UPDATE: Senate Appropriations schedules hearings for Wednesday, Nov. 12.
Moving quickly, the Senate Appropriation Committee announced it wil take up the administration's proposals at a hearng next Wednesday with a full slate of government officials from the key agencies. The committee will remaiend chaired bya Democat, Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, until the end of this Congressional session. The Republican controlled House Appropriations Committee has not yet announced hearings.
REUTERS Nov. 5, 2014 (WASHINGTON) - The World Bank's private sector arm pledged $450 million on Wednesday to support trade, investment and employment in the three West African countries affected the most by the deadly Ebola outbreak.
The announcement from the bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) brings total World Bank commitments for Ebola to nearly $1 billion in the past three months, an unprecedented rapid response for a development institution that has been accused of dragging its feet on project approval in the past.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, a doctor and anthropologist, said
"The fear swirling around Ebola has the potential to do long-term harm to businesses globally, and especially in the Ebola-affected countries," Kim said in a statement. "IFC .. will find ways to help boost trade and investment in West Africa, which will be essential to ensure that private companies continue to operate and sustain employment under difficult circumstances."
VIENNA—After Oyewale Tomori finished his talk on Ebola here at the International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance, there was stunned silence. Tomori, the president of the Nigerian Academy of Science, used his plenary to deliver a scathing critique of how African countries have handled the threat of Ebola and how corruption is hampering efforts to improve health. Aid money often simply disappears, Tomori charged, "and we are left underdeveloped, totally and completely unprepared to tackle emerging pathogens."
"Ebola is Africa's problem," says Oyewale Tomori.
Trained as a veterinarian, Tomori was the World Health Organization’s (WHO's) regional virologist for the African region in 1995 during the Ebola outbreak in Kikwit in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
U.S. and British insurance companies have begun to write Ebola exclusions into their policies for hospitals, event organizers, airliners, and other businesses vulnerable to disruption from the disease.
As a result, new policies and renewals will become more expensive for firms looking to insure business travel to West Africa or to cover the risk of losses from Ebola-driven business interruptions (BI).The cost of insuring an event against Ebola, for example, would likely be triple the amount of normal cancellation insurance — if the venue was in a region not known to be affected by the virus.
UPDATE: EUROPEAN UNION ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL FUNDING, NAMES AN EBOLA COORDINATOR
NEW YORK TIMES
By James Kanter and Andrew Higgins OCT. 24, 2014
BRUSSELS--
... Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, announced tody that Christos Stylianides, the coming European commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management, would be named Ebola coordinator.
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