🦠 Ebola money is going missing while the outbreak spreads, MSF warns
Front-line health workers in DR Congo are unpaid and short of supplies even though hundreds of millions of dollars were sent to fight the virus, the charity says.
The mystery
The outbreak, officially declared in May, has now killed over 5,400 people and infected 11,000, making it the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak ever recorded. Huge sums have been pledged to stop it. So why do many responders say they are working with empty hands?
The answer
Médecins Sans Frontières reported that money is not reaching the people meant to use it: staff go unpaid, lack training and run short of basic supplies, and some surveillance teams exist on paper but not on the ground. Last month the Africa CDC said $700m of $962m given to organisations running the response was unaccounted for, calling it a transparency and reporting failure rather than proven theft. The Congolese health minister said only 22% of aid agencies had shared details of their work. Contact tracing, which finds and isolates people who met an infected person, remains weak: two-thirds of deaths happen in communities rather than treatment centres. One epidemiologist estimates over half of cases go undetected, so the outbreak could last another year. MSF says North Kivu has been too slow and Haut-Uélé overlooked.
Now think about this
What would make sure that emergency money reaches the nurses and tracers on the front line, and not just the reports?
