Ebola-hit countries appeal for $3.2 billion to rebuild

Liberia’s last confirmed case, in March, was also suspected to be linked to sexual transmission, because the virus isolated from that patient, Ruth Tugbah, who died, closely matched that detected in the semen of her boyfriend, who had recovered from Ebola months before she fell ill. Investigators are still looking into whether he had travelled to Guinea or Sierra Leone recently, which could explain it. If an worldwide link is not established, it raises the prospect of other Ebola cases in Liberia that have not been picked up; or, more ominously, that the disease has mutated in some way which makes it harder to track.

Sierra Leone’s President Ernest Bai Koroma said making the national plans work “has the urgency of a life and death situation for over 20 million people in our countries”.

An global conference was held this week at United Nations (U.N.) headquarters in New York City to discuss measures to support the recovery of countries heavily impacted by the current outbreak of the Ebola virus.

The Ebola outbreak, which began in Guinea in December 2013, has killed more than 11,200 people across West Africa.

In a statement, European Union aid commissioner Christos Stylianides said “the emergency is not over until we are down to zero Ebola cases”.

New infections in Sierra Leone and Guinea have fallen dramatically, suggesting the epidemic is largely under control.

To successfully end the crisis, recovery efforts must shift from the immediate emergency response, to a long-term approach to “build back better’ and ensure greater resilience to potential future shocks”.

Produced by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under a very-high magnification, this digitally-colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicts a single filamentous Ebola virus particle that had budded from the surface of a VERO cell of the African green monkey kidney epithelial cell line.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, speaking by videoconference, pledged to create “a pandemic response team” to respond to pandemics in every country.

The funds will help rebuild health care systems, reopen schools, support agriculture and get government services fully up and running. That is why today is about more than speeches and pledges ” it is a chance to forge a partnership for a better future ” a future that is full of opportunity and free of Ebola.