Ebola-hit countries unified in regional recovery plans, call for international support

The presidents of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three hardest hit West African countries in the Ebola crisis last year, on Friday emphasized the importance of a sub-regional recovery plan, requesting that the majority of the 7.2 billion U.S. dollars requested go to sub- regional recovery efforts.

"In the spirit of your continuous support for the implementation of both national and sub-regional plans, we wish to inform you that the gap of financing is estimated at 7.2 billion U. S. dollars." Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, said at a UN conference here. "In which 4 billion will finance the sub- regional plan."

The two-day conference, which kicked off here Friday, aims to ensure that the Ebola affected countries receive the support and resources they need.

Speaking during a pledging summit of the International Ebola Recovery Conference, the Liberian president said that the sub- regional funds would go to the Mano River Union -- an organization made up of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone as well as Cote d' Ivoire.

"A strong Mano River Union can be a formidable force for recovery and resilience in the sub-region," Sirleaf said.

The group of three West African countries hope that the international community will make pledges of donations and loans to help meet this financing gap during the pledging summit here Friday. The funds would be managed by the countries through a single Consolidated Ebola Recovery Trust Fund (CERTF), according to Johnson Sirleaf.

The West African leaders also took the opportunity to thank the international community for its support thus far in reducing significantly the number of Ebola cases.

Ernest Bai Koroma, president of Sierra Leone, praised the international community as well as the heroism of thousands of Ebola response workers who, he said, had helped pin down the virus to just a few neighborhoods.

But Koroma warned that the international community should not shift its attention before the crisis was truly over.

"Humanity sometimes displays short attention spans and may want to move on to other issues because the threat from Ebola seems over," Koroma said.

Without rebuilding the resilience of communities to respond to the comebacks experts say are likely the public health threat would remain, he added.

"The threat is never over until we rebuild the health sectors Ebola demolished; until we rebuild livelihoods in agriculture that it compromised, until we shore up government revenues it dried up; and until we breathe life again unto the private sector it has suffocated," Koroma said.

Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe and chair of the African Union, also spoke at the conference, and he said that the meeting was "a clarion call, to the international collective to up-scale its preparedness and capacity to handle and manage disasters, particularly health epidemics."

"The imperative to build capacity and preparedness in that regard is too visible to ignore," Mugabe said.

When Ebola was first detected in March 2014 in Guinea's forest, officials assumed the deadly virus could quickly be stamped out, just as it had in more than two dozen previous outbreaks, mostly in central and eastern Africa.

However, health officials now acknowledge they were too slow to respond to this emergency, allowing Ebola to cross porous borders in a region where broken health systems were unable to stop its spread. Endite