Tuesday 3 March 2015

Ebola outbreak: IMF to give Sierra Leone $80m immediately


A man walks past an ebola campaign banner with the new slogan "Ebola Must GO" in West Africa on 23 February  2015.World leaders are due to meet in Brussels on Tuesday to talk about Ebola
Sierra Leone is to receive more than $80m (£52m) immediately to help the country end the Ebola outbreak and recover from its effects.
The IMF has pledged a $187m financial aid package for Sierra Leone to support the country's struggling economy.
World leaders are meeting in Brussels on Tuesday to talk about Ebola and the long-term plans to fight the disease.
Nearly 10,000 people have died in the outbreak, the vast majority in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
'Painstaking task'
On Monday, the UN said that the struggle to contain the epidemic was reaching a "second phase".
But UN special envoy on Ebola David Nabarro told the Associated Press news agency that the international community should not become complacent as getting to zero cases was "the hardest part".
"It's a really difficult, painstaking task," he said.
Around 600 delegates will meet on Tuesday to discuss the response to the outbreak.
World leaders, including the presidents of all three worst-hit nations, will talk about how best to rebuild the economies after the epidemic has been stopped and what the response should be in the long term.
The Ebola outbreak has killed 9,714 people in West Africa since it began in 2014, with 23,913 confirmed cases.

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