Bill to pass £600m as ebola cases soar, charity warns

Even as US president Barack Obama was expected to announce the deployment of 3,000 troops to help provide aid in the region, Doctors Without Borders told the UN health agency that the global response to ebola was falling far short of what is needed.

“The response to Ebola continues to fall dangerously behind,” Joanne Liu, president of the medical charity, told a meeting at the United Nations in Geneva. “The window of opportunity to contain this outbreak is closing. We need more countries to stand up, we need greater deployment, and we need it now.”

In a report, the WHO said some $987.8m is needed for everything from paying health workers and buying supplies to tracing people who have been exposed to the virus, which is spread by contact with bodily fluids such as blood, urine or diarrhoea. Some $23.8m (£14.6m) alone is needed to pay burial teams and buy body bags, since the bodies of victims are highly infectious and workers must wear protective suits.

Nearly 5,000 people have been sickened by Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal since it was first recognised in March. The WHO says it expects that figure could rise to more than 20,000. At least 2,400 people have died, with Liberia bearing the brunt of the fatalities.

Recent weeks have seen a flurry of promises of aid.

In addition to the US troops, the UN health agency said China has promised to send a 59-person mobile laboratory team to Sierra Leone that includes lab experts, epidemiologists, doctors and nurses. Britain is also planning to build and operate an Ebola clinic in Sierra Leone, and Cuba has promised to send the country more than 160 health workers.

Still, hospitals and clinics in West Africa are now turning the sick away because they do not have enough space to treat everyone – a sure way to increase the spread of the disease.