European Union Heads of Government have been meeting in Brussels over Thursday and Friday. Leaders meet regularly under the aegis of the European Council. The move had been signaled earlier this week.
European Union leaders agreed Friday to boost aid to combat the deadly Ebola virus in west Africa to one billion euros ($1.26 billion), EU president Herman Van Rompuy said.
"EU will increase financial help to 1.0 billion euros to fight Ebola in West Africa," Van Rompuy tweeted on the second day of an EU leaders' summit in Brussels.
The 28 member states and the European Commission have already pledged nearly 600 million euros to pay for medical staff and facilities in the worst affected countries—Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, where some 4,900 people have died of the disease.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has led calls to raise 1.0 billion euros, urging his EU peers to match London's efforts to tame a disease for which there is no vaccine nor cure, only therapeutic treatments.
http://medicalxpress.com/...
At the moment it is unclear whether this also includes the cost of "in kind" aid in the form of armed forces and medical personnel also going into the region. For example on Tuesday this week:
Around 150 British Army personnel left RAF Brize Norton this morning to add to the significant UK efforts to tackle Ebola.
The soldiers, mostly medics from 35 Squadron, 5 Medical Regiment of the Royal Army Medical Corps, are due to arrive in Freetown, Sierra Leone, later today.
They will run the Ebola Training Academy – teaching local healthcare workers and hygienists how to protect themselves from infection and how to prevent it in others.
Also deploying today were soldiers from the Queen’s Own Gurkha Logistic Regiment and 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland.
Travelling to Sierra Leone with UK troops was International Development Secretary Justine Greening. She will visit a treatment facility in Kerry Town and a DfID-funded Ebola Training Academy.
Major General Tim Radford, the General Officer Commanding Force Troops Command – in charge of most of the deploying troops – was on hand in the early hours to wish his personnel well on their deployment.
He said:
This is the third group of soldiers who have deployed to Sierra Leone in support of the DfID operation to help tackle the crisis.
They will join more than 300 soldiers who arrived over a month ago and have been instrumental in setting up the infrastructure and treatment facilities across the west of the country.
Last Friday,
RFA Argus (Royal Fleet Auxilliary) sailed to Sierra Leone. In Septermber, staff from NHS hospitals were asked to volunteer to travel to the Ebola effected areas through
UK-Med
UK-Med was established in 1995 to facilitate the provision of health workers from across the UK to support the hospitals in Sarajevo during the Balkans war. Subsequently it has despatched teams to a range of countries and crises including Cape Verde, Kosovo, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, China Indonesia, Haiti, the Philippines and Jordan.
UK-Med supports education and training for health workers in developing countries and continues to facilitate the provision of UK health care workers who volunteer their services to countries during conflict and catastrophe.
Other EU countries are making similar provisions.
The Netherlands is making a large transport ship available.
On 1 October 2014, in support of the call by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) for medical staff to support the Ebola clinics in affected areas, the Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport, the Minister of Defence and the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation sent a letter to all chief hospital administrators in the Netherlands requesting their cooperation in informing doctors and nurses of scope for voluntary deployment abroad and in facilitating such postings.
On 9 October, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Lilianne Ploumen announced that the Netherlands would make its largest naval ship, HNLMS Karel Doorman, available to the EU and UN. The latter are currently assessing in more detail how the ship’s capacity could be used to transport large quantities of goods to and from the region. In addition, Dutch businesses active in the area are being consulted on how they can contribute to relief efforts, for example by supplying ambulances, organising information campaigns or making their logistics networks available.
After a slow start, it looks like the response is now getting to the point where there can be real hope that the outbreak will be controlled. In 1914 troops went to the front believing "it will be all over by Christmas". While beating Ebola in West Africa in the next couple of months is likely far too optimistic, we are perhaps at the end of the beginning.
5:51 AM PT: In case people are worried, the UK government sites have an "open use" licence so I have exceeded the "fair use" limit usually applying for this site.