Ebola-Stricken Countries Only Received 40% of all Donations

A report publicized by a professor from the New York University revealed that only 40 percent of the total funds donated by various countries in response to the Ebola outbreak were received by affected nations.

Aside from the lack of funds, the donations to countries hit by the deadly virus arrived late.

Karen Grepin of the New York University used information from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for her report which was published in the peer-reviewed journal BMJ.

According to the assistant professor, the World Health Organization (WHO) first requested for financial aid in late March of 2014 after the death toll caused by the outbreak in Guinea reached 29. Back then, the agency was asking for $4.8 million to control the spread of the disease and provide necessary medical services to the country.

However, after the outbreak reached Liberia and Sierra Leone in August, WHO urged international donors to allocate $71 million to aid the global response plan. Before the year ended, the amount WHO was asking for in terms of financial assistance has already climbed to $1.5 billion.

In response, donor organizations including the United States, United Kingdom, the World Bank and other U.N. countries promised to donate a total of $2.9 billion to the Ebola-stricken nations.

However, despite pledging more than what was needed, a little more than 40 percent of that promised amount or around $1.09 billion reached the affected countries. In addition, the funds arrived months after WHO reported about the spread of the virus.

Grepin noted in her report that the problem regarding the donations was not caused by lack of support from donor countries. Although other nations are willing to help stop the Ebola crisis, the funds were not deployed fast enough.

The researcher suggests establishing a more efficient system designed to collect and distribute funds to countries in need during any type of emergency situation. Grepin mentioned that the delay in the distribution of donations have contributed to the rapid spread of the Ebola virus.

"Monitoring and tracking donor response to the epidemic, and how the money was spent, is important to improve our response to future public health threats," she wrote in the report. "Although quantity of funding is important, so is the quality of the response."