UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday urged the international community to raise $1.1 billion to fight the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Speaking from UN headquarters in New York, Guterres said the organisation had presented a humanitarian response plan worth $2.13 billion . He said the plan was 48% funded, largely thanks to a significant contribution from the United States.
However, he warned that the money currently available would last only a few weeks, not several months.
Guterres said essential operations were at risk of losing funding just as they needed to be expanded. He called for the remaining $1.1 billion to fully finance the humanitarian plan, while warning that additional resources would still be needed in future.
The World Health Organization announced the Ebola outbreak in Congo on 15 May. It has since spread to six provinces in the former Belgian colony.
Guterres said that by 25 August the virus had already claimed more than 2,744 lives. In just three months, he said, the outbreak had surpassed the death toll of the epidemic that struck eastern Congo between 2018 and 2020, previously considered the deadliest in the country’s history.
