West Africa's health systems need financial backing to overcome Ebola epidemic
More than 11,000 people have died of Ebola since the world’s worst outbreak of the disease, including 815 health workers, and health care systems in West Africa have yet to recover from the impact.
According to the World Health Organization, health systems that collapsed must be rebuilt urgently to provide basic services and confront other diseases.
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Recovery plans in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone will cost US$2.3 billion, and only half of that amount has been pledged.
"If we want to ensure that this crisis doesn't happen again, we need all together to come up with this money," Dr. Ruediger Krech said at a news briefing. "We must reverse the trend in global health where we wait for the fire to flare up, run to put it out but then forget to fireproof the building."
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A senior official from the organization stated that donors need confidence in good governance to provide more funds.
"Some of these countries have problems with their governance, problems in terms of where money flows, so a lot of monies flow elsewhere. This needs to be addressed so that the international community also has trust and builds up trust that monies they are giving to those countries will be well spent," said Krech.
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"The devastating numbers of nurses who have lost their lives shows there is clearly an essential need for significant strengthening of safety policies and the provision of adequate protective equipment and appropriate training," David Benton, the head of the International Council of Nurses, said in a statement.
Although Liberia was declared Ebola-free this month, Guinea and Sierra Leone reported 35 new Ebola cases in the past week, four times as many as in the previous week.
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