NEW YORK – The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it received 256 million dollars from humanitarian fund to help prevent and contain the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in West Africa.
UN Secretary-General’s Spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, made the disclosure at a news conference in New York on Friday.
He said the amount was nearly 26 per cent of the total 988 million dollars pledged by member states and donor agencies to combat the disease.
Dujarric said an additional 163 million dollars had been pledged to activities in the plan that covered immediate humanitarian support to the region, particularly Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
He added that the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) had so far committed 13.4 million dollars to support food and health operations, as well as the regional humanitarian air service.
The Spokesperson said the funding would allow UN agencies to help toward boosting the national authorities’ capacity to respond to the crisis, through prevention programmes and measures to help communities to deal and cope with the effects of the epidemic. [eap_ad_1] Meanwhile, Dujarric said the Head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), Anthony Banbury, was in Sierra Leone on Friday on the second leg of his visit to most affected countries.
He said Banbury was to set up a regional office of the Mission and meet with government and partners to assess the needs.
He added that Banbury would travel on to Guinea next week.
The UN says latest figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show that the total number of cases in the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is 7,178, with 3,338 reported deaths.
World leaders had pledged one billion dollars to combat Ebola in West Africa during the high-level meeting convened by UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, during the General Assembly’s annual debate.(NAN)
[eap_ad_4]
