As the international Ebola response approaches the “last mile” in Liberia, experts worry the laser focus of foreign aid efforts on achieving zero Ebola cases could hurt, or even crowd out Liberia’s own efforts to rebuild.
The concern is an eerie echo of what happened five years ago after the Haiti earthquake, when a blitz of aid organizations created chaos and delayed disaster relief projects, potentially derailing national efforts to rebuild.
“The money for Ebola is not actually coming to Liberia.” the Liberian minister of public works, W. Gyude Moore, said at a Center for Global Development event on a post-Ebola Liberia.