Leaders of Ebola-hit countries in west Africa yesterday attended an international conference in Brussels to mobilize a final push to end the outbreak and ensure the delivery of nearly US$5 billion in aid pledges.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma and Guinean President Alpha Conde, who lead the three countries hardest hit by the epidemic, were joined by top officials from around the world for the EU-backed meeting.
The conference comes as Sierra Leone’s vice president remains in self-imposed quarantine after one of his bodyguards died from Ebola amid a recent spike in cases following a long decline.
“It will be a very difficult and painstaking task,” UN Ebola envoy David Nabarro told a briefing on the eve of the conference.
More than 9,500 people have died of the disease since the west African epidemic emerged in southern Guinea in December 2013.
Nabarro said the number of new cases had declined from about 900 a week to 100, but that cases appeared to be climbing back up in the coastal regions of Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Officials from the EU, China, the US, Cuba and Australia were in Brussels alongside the UN, the World Bank and other international organizations trying to wipe out the disease in west Africa.
“The purpose of this conference is getting to zero” in terms of human cases, an EU official involved in the talks said separately. “The curve is flattening out, but definitely it is not at zero.”
Nonetheless, officials acknowledged there was less alarm about Ebola this year than a few months ago, when people feared it could spread to Europe or other parts of Africa.
Nigeria, Senegal and Mali have all managed to show that Ebola cases can be reduced to zero after they too were hit by the virus, another EU official said.
Officials said countries around the world have so far pledged US$4.9 billion to fight Ebola, with US$2.4 billion disbursed until now.
“This conference is not really a pledging conference, but rather an occasion to take stock to urge countries that have not yet disbursed to disburse what they have actually already pledged,” one official said.
EU officials organizing the Brussels event said the conference would also focus on how to revive economic development in west Africa.
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