World Bank pledges more funds for Ebola flight in West Africa

The World Bank announced Thursday an additional $100-million support package in its Ebola response activities for three West African countries ravaged by the epidemic.

Visiting Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said the additional support was aimed at speeding up deployment of foreign health workers to the three worst-affected countries -- Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia -- Xinhua reported.

According to a release issued by the Ghana office of the World Bank soon after the announcement, the additional financing will come from the Bank's Crisis Response Window, which is designed to help low-income International Development Association (IDA) countries respond to exceptionally severe crises in a timely, transparent and predictable way.

It said this financing complements emergency relief efforts of the UN and other international organisations by providing immediate crisis response, supporting country efforts to provide care and essential support for affected populations, while helping countries return to a path of long-term development.

With the announcement, the total World Bank support for the countries has gone up to $500 million, having announced a $400-million package earlier.

The health workers are needed to treat and care for patients, boost local health capacity, manage Ebola treatment centres, and resume essential health services for non-Ebola conditions, said the release.

"The world's response to the Ebola crisis has increased significantly in recent weeks, but we still have a huge gap in getting enough trained health workers to the areas with the highest infection rates," Jim said.

This additional financing is also intended to help set up a coordination hub in close cooperation with the three countries, the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN's main Ebola coordination body in Ghana, and other agencies to recruit, train and deploy qualified foreign health workers.

The proposed hub will be designed and operated in coordination with the Senior UN System Coordinator for Ebola and the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), with technical support from the WHO and in close collaboration with other partners.

It will also resolve key issues blocking the recruitment of significantly more foreign health workers, such as pay and benefits, recruitment and training, safety, transportation, housing, provision of urgent medical care, and/or medical evacuations for any infected staff, according to the bank.

The World Bank president said the hub could jumpstart the development of a more permanent global health security reserve corps from different countries for rapid and targeted health worker deployment in response to future health crises.