Just a day after mobilizing a $105 million grant for immediate response to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the World Bank insisted in mid-September that it would do everything in its power to prevent the disease from causing “potentially catastrophic” short- and medium-term damage to the economies of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The world’s top multilateral donor had initially pledged $200 million in August for the Ebola response, over $100 million of which was for the medium- and long-term health systems strengthening in the three affected countries, “but if there is not enough money coming online to build the immediate response … we will have to … divert it and focus on the immediate response,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said Wednesday.
If that is the case, Kim explained during a conference call with reporters attended by Devex, the bank’s executive board will have to go back and review its concessional loan window managed by the International Development Association — the institution’s fund for low-income countries — to review how to make sure there is still funding to build back the health systems in the affected countries.