EU doubles down on Ebola fund

European Union leaders agreed Friday to raise the bloc’s financial support to halt the spread of Ebola in West Africa to 1 billion euros ($1.27 billion). At a European Council summit in Brussels on Oct. 24, EU heads of government responded to an appeal by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had called on them to double the funding. “There is a massive crisis in West Africa, and we should feel a moral obligation to do something about it,” Cameron said at the summit. During a working dinner with fellow EU leaders, he announced that he would top up the U.K.'s contribution of 125 million pounds ($201.45 million) with an extra 80 million pounds. Cameron sought to shame EU leaders into action, arguing that the United Kingdom’s pledge up to that point was more than the combined funding provided by 19 of the bloc's 28 member states. He even pointed to the fact that Swedish furniture manufacturer IKEA, with its 3.9 million-pound support for French medical group Médecins Sans Frontières, had done more to fight Ebola than countries like Austria, Luxembourg, Poland and Hungary. Until the Brussels meeting, the EU’s support stood at just over 600 million euros, with the largest contributions coming from the European Commission (206 million euros), the U.K. (157 million euros), Germany (142 million euros), France (36 million euros), the Netherlands (31 million euros), Sweden (26 million euros) and Belgium (22 million euros). Seven EU member states had not offered any funding as of posting time. Devex has learned from well-placed EU sources that the billion euro target was covered by pledges made by EU leaders during the summit. Commission services were still busy collating the prospective contributions announced at the summit, but these would include the following additions: ● 80 million pounds from the U.K. for 200 field hospitals in Sierra Leone, including 10 million pounds channeled towards safe body burials. ● 5 million euros from the Netherlands for mobile hospitals, labs, ambulances and protective clothing. ● 2.5 million euros from Belgium to fund UNICEF and the U.N. Humanitarian Air Service. ● 9 million euros from France, specifically to help Ivory Coast protect itself against the spread of the virus. ● 16 million euros from Ireland for equipment and strengthening exit screenings. Ireland will soon make extra pledges, Prime Minister Enda Kenny announced at the end of the EU summit. ● 250 million Swedish kroner ($34.26 million) from the government of Sweden. ● 90,000 euros from Slovakia for material destined for field hospitals in West Africa. In other developments, a Dutch marine frigate left Oct. 23 for West Africa from the Netherlands with a cargo of 100 vehicles and 50 containers of aid material from EU member states, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations. The costs are shared by the European Commission and the Dutch defense and development cooperation ministries. Oxfam welcomed the EU leaders’ financial support to stop Ebola from spreading. “This is excellent news,” said Natalia Alonso, deputy director of advocacy and head of the NGO’s EU office, “but what’s needed now is to urgently turn these pledges into cash on the ground.” Beyond the funding debate, EU leaders also committed to increase the deployment of medical and support staff in the region, and member states and the Commission agreed to guarantee appropriate care for international health workers within available resources to receive the treatment they need, including through medical evacuation. The Commission was also tasked with developing a package of measures that address the wider political, security and economic implications of the Ebola crisis in West Africa. Alonso applauded the EU’s commitment to provide more medical and support staff, but she added that military personnel and resources must also be urgently deployed to enable a rapid scale up of the response. Read more development aid news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive top international development headlines from the world’s leading donors, news sources and opinion leaders — emailed to you FREE every business day.