UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations announced Tuesday it is releasing $15 million from its emergency relief fund to help Guinea and Congo combat new outbreaks of Ebola.
U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock made the announcement, and U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the funding will help both countries respond to the outbreak and support neighboring countries to prepare.
This is the first time that Ebola has been recorded in Guinea since an outbreak that ended in 2016. The West African nation officially declared it had an Ebola epidemic after at least three people died and four others became infected.
Neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia have put their citizens on high alert because of the situation in Guinea. The three nations battled the world’s deadliest Ebola outbreak from 2014 to 2016, which began in Guinea and in which more than 11,300 people died.
Dujarric said the outbreak in Congo “is in the same area as the 10th Ebola epidemic in the country that claimed more than 2,200 lives from August 2018 to June 2020.”
He said details of how the $15 million will be allocated “will be made in the next few days as we receive more details about specific requirements and needs on the ground.”
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