NEW YORK, July 31 (RIA Novosti) – The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday it will spend $100 million on doctors, nurses and experts to halt a West African Ebola outbreak that has already claimed more than 700 lives.
“The scale of the Ebola outbreak, and the persistent threat it poses, requires WHO and Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to take the response to a new level, and this will require increased resources, in-country medical expertise, regional preparedness and coordination,” WHO director-general Dr Margaret Chan said.
The world body will send “several hundred” more doctors, nurses, epidemiologists and logisticians to the region to focus on stopping the hemorrhagic fever from spreading – both inside the three stricken countries and across international borders.
More than 1,300 people have been infected and 729 killed in the worst Ebola outbreak in history and the first to have occurred in West Africa. It began in southern Guinea in February and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone.