African leaders urge Ebola ‘Marshall Plan’

Brussels — Leaders of the west African countries worst hit by Ebola urged the world on Tuesday to back a "Marshall Plan" to help them stamp out the disease and rebuild their shattered economies.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma and Guinean President Alpha Conde pressed the need for recovery at an international conference in Brussels as the number of new cases slows.

More than 9,700 people have died of the disease since the west African epidemic emerged in southern Guinea in December 2013, with nearly 24,000 people infected, according to the World Health Organisation.

"The impact of Ebola on our economies has been profound. The most important long-term response to Ebola therefore rests in plans and strategies for economic recovery," Sirleaf told the EU-backed conference.

"There is no doubt this will require significant resources, even a Marshall Plan," she said, referring to the US-led aid plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II.

Conde also underlined the need for a "Marshall Plan", telling a press conference that it was as if the region is "coming out of a war" with its economy and public services decimated.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington approved on Monday funding and debt relief worth about $187 million for Sierra Leone for coming years, with $85 million of that to be disbursed immediately.

The charity Oxfam has previously made similar calls for a Marshall Plan-type effort to help stricken west Africa.

The countries at the centre of the Ebola epidemic are forecast to lose 12 per cent of their combined gross domestic product this year, according to World Bank estimates.

In addition, their health sectors have been partially wiped out by the epidemic or forced to divert resources to fighting Ebola at the expense of other diseases like measles, malaria and AIDS.

 'No complacency' 

The conference gathered the three African leaders plus scores of delegations including the European Union, China, the United States, Cuba and Australia, plus the United Nations, the World Bank and other international organisations.

The African leaders repeated a pledge made last month to eradicate the disease by mid-April.

"We must guard against complacency. There will not be total victory until we get to" zero cases, Koroma said. "We must be ever-ready to aggressively combat this outbreak."

UN Ebola envoy David Nabarro said on Monday that the number of new cases had declined from around 900 a week to 100, but that cases appeared to be climbing back up in the coastal regions of Sierra Leone and Guinea.

"The purpose of this conference is getting to zero" in terms of human cases, an EU official involved in the talks said separately, but added: "The curve is flattening out, but definitely it is not at zero."

Officials pointed to the fact that Nigeria, Senegal and Mali have all managed to show that Ebola cases can be reduced to zero after they too were hit by the virus.

Countries around the world have so far pledged $4.9 billion to fight Ebola, with $2.4 billion disbursed until now, officials said.

Another $400 million will have to be disbursed quickly in order to eradicate the disease, Claus Haugaard Sorensen, a senior official with the European Commission, the EU executive, told AFP.

The IMF and the World Bank will host a further conference in April in Washington to see if there are still financial gaps, followed by another called by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in May, Nabarro said.