US To
Work with UN
on Ebola,
PEPFAR Absence
in
Liberia &
Guinea
Explained
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
September 25
-- The Ebola
epidemic is
said to have
“collapsed”
health systems
in Liberia,
Sierra Leone
and Guinea,
showing how
weak and
under-funded
they were even
before this
year's
outbreak.
After
a Senior US
State
Department
Official on
September 25
said that the
US' PEPFAR
funding had
strengthen
health systems
allowing prior
Ebola
outbreaks in
East Africa
and the
Democratic
Republic of
Congo to be
rapidly
contained,
Inner City
Press asked
the official
what the US
and PEPFAR had
been doing in
Liberia,
Sierra Leone
and Guinea.
PEPFAR is the
U.S.
President’s
Emergency Plan
for AIDS
Relief.
The
US official
said ruefully,
“PEPFAR does
not have
resources in
those
three
countries.
They had very
low HIV
prevalence
from the
beginning
and were not a
significant
investment
country. Over
the last
several
years we have
have been
investing
$500,000 a
year in Sierra
Leone to
support their
TB laboratory
diagnosis. But
we've had very
limited
support of
those
countries.”
And
that may be
one of the
problems. Click
here to view
map.
Looking
forward,
the UN says
4000 of its
staff applied
by a September
24 to
be deployed to
the new UNMEER
Ebola response
mission, to be
headquartered
in Accra,
Ghana. Inner
City Press
asked a Senior
State
Department
Official -- a
different one
-- how the US'
4000 people
will interface
with the UN
mission. (Click
here for
Inner City
Press'
story
on what this
other US
official said
about South
Sudan.)
The
US official
replied, “we
are working
closely with
UN, we have to
coordinate.
The UN will
put its
headquarters
in Accra.
USAID will
have some
people working
closely with,
embedded with
them in
Accra.”
Now
that US has in
essence
adopted
Liberia,
sending 4000
people to
respond to
Ebola, with
the UK similar
adopting its
former colony
Sierra Leone,
and France its
former colony
Guinea, the
question
arises or
remains how
these
countries were
left so
under-developed.
Watch this
site.
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