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EU to aid countries bordering Ebola epicentre

18 November 2014, 11:30 CET
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EU to aid countries bordering Ebola epicentre

Ebola

(BRUSSELS) - The European Union on Monday pledged millions of euros to Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast amid growing fears that Ebola could spread to them from its epicentre in west Africa.

The International Committee of the Red Cross meanwhile said it was sending a team to Mali in a bid to contain the disease.

To date the bulk of the Ebola cases have been in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, with 5,177 people dead from around 14,500 cases, according to the World Health Organization.

Mali has had four Ebola deaths while there have been none in Senegal or Ivory Coast.

But the EU on Monday announced 12 million euros ($15 million) in funding for neighbours of the affected countries "to help them prepare for the risk of an Ebola outbreak through early detection and public awareness measures."

The funding was part of a new 29 million euro package for West Africa as a whole, which comes on top of the one billion euros previously announced by the EU and its member states.

The rest of the money will go on transporting aid and equipment to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea and for evacuating infected international aid workers to hospitals in Europe.

The new aid was announced by EU Ebola coordinator Christos Stylianides following his trip earlier this month to the worst-hit countries.

"We must intensify our joint efforts to contain, control, treat and ultimately defeat this virus," said Stylianides who briefed European foreign ministers Monday on the Ebola response.

The Red Cross is "sending a team of international experts down to support Mali Red Cross in the planning operation so that we can contain it in Mali as well," the organisation's Birte Hald told a press conference in Brussels.

The west African nation has been scrambling to prevent an minor outbreak turning into a major crisis after the deaths of a Guinean imam and the Malian nurse who treated him in the capital Bamako. Two others have also died.

Hald, who has been leading Red Cross efforts from Conakry, added: "We are conducting preparedness activities in all the surrounding countries."

3346th Council meeting - FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Brussels, 17 November 2014


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