U.N. agencies need a final $1 billion to fight West Africa's Ebola epidemic as experts move to a new phase in the battle involving a massive detective operation to trace remaining cases, the U.N. Ebola chief said Wednesday.
David Nabarro estimated that an overall total of $4 billion in new funds, equivalent to all the aid committed so far, was needed by relief agencies and the worst affected countries themselves to end the epidemic and “help those countries to get back to the economic trajectory they had.
So far, U.N. agencies have received roughly $1 billion, two-thirds of a target set last year. Nabarro said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the World Food Program (WFP) now need the same amount again.
Although the rate of infection is slowing, experts in Davos said that tracking down remaining cases so that the virus cannot flare up again will be a major task.
A priority for the next few months will be scaling up efforts to trace all the contacts of infected people. Nabarro said that would require perhaps 1,000 epidemiologists, since there are still roughly 50 micro-outbreaks in the region.
“I can't say how long it will take, but it is that last part of getting down to zero that might be the most difficult, Nabarro said.