The United States and the European Commission have pledged to provide medical evacuations for health care workers and other responders fighting the Ebola crisis in West Africa. CCTV America’s Daniel Ryntjes reports from the IMF and World Bank where world leaders have been in a crisis meeting.
Despite increasingly urgent appeals for foreign medical staff, many of them have not traveled to West Africa.
“In terms of immediate tasks right now, first, something that I admit we have struggled with for quite some time, are medivacs. Finally, we have a solution, we have a contract. As Ngozi said, turn to the private sector, they’ll come up with a solution for you. So, we can, under 48 hours, guarantee the evacuation of international medical staff,” said Kristalina Georgieva, a member of the European Commission.
Though details haven’t been provided, the U.S evacuation commitment appears to be broader, including all “responders” to the emergency. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf also joined the meeting by video conference.
This week, a report from the World Bank estimated the cost of the Ebola crisis could surpass $32 billion, most of which is for what health officials term “aversion behavior” or people and businesses not directly affected by the crisis who choose to avoid economic activity in West Africa. The co-author of that report says a commitment for medical evacuations will help lessen this affect.
“The emphasis is on the need to reduce the aversion behavior by reassuring people first of all that they can go to help, that outsiders who want to go to help can do so safely and can be evacuated if they, by bad luck or some mistake, happen to get sick,” said Mead Over, a senior fellow for the Center for Global Development.
CCTV America’s Elaine Reyes interviews Walter Tsou, a consultant on public health and teacher of health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, about the spread of Ebola and global efforts to fight the epidemic.