6th November, 2014
Humanitarian agencies have welcomed the Federal Government’s decision to commit up to an additional $24 million to tackling the Ebola crisis but say far more still needs to be done.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Federal Health Minister Peter Dutton announced yesterday that $20 million would be provided over the next eight months to support the establishment of a 100 bed treatment facility in Sierra Leone to be managed by Australian private medical services firm, Aspen Medical.
In addition, the Federal Government are providing $2 million to humanitarian agency RedR Australia to fund the deployment of technical experts to non-frontline roles in the UN response to Ebola and another $2 million to train public health officials in Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the Pacific Islands to prepare for the possibility of an Ebola outbreak.
The new commitments bring the total Australian funding commitment to tackling Ebola $42 million.
Tim Costello, World Vision Australia’s chief executive, said that with the world "in a race against time" to contain the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, it was "encouraging" to see the Australian Government’s commitment and, as well as the increased funding, acknowleged their efforts in seeking assurances that Australians volunteering in Ebola-affected countries would receive treatment and evacuation as required.
But Mr Costello said that along with frontline medical assistance, it was "critical" that the international community look to train healthcare workers in prevention and control measures, implement community-based awareness and prevention campaigns and strengthen the "fragile" healthcare systems which have been "strained by the scale of the outbreak".
Helen Szoke, chief executive of Oxfam, said the government’s announcement had "not come a moment too soon" but went on to call for the government to consider deploying Australian military personnel to help tackle the crisis.
“The deployment of healthcare professionals to manage a 100 bed Ebola Treatment Unit will make a valuable contribution to the international response, however in order to respond wholistically to this crisis, there is also a critical need for support functions such as logistics," Dr Szoke said in a statement.
"We would therefore urge the government to continue to monitor the need for additional logistical and technical support to aid the health response, and to consider the deployment of Australian military to support these efforts."
– DAVID ADAMS
