As US Says It Work with UN Mission on Ebola, PEPFAR's Absence From Liberia & Guinea Explained

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 25 -- The Ebola epidemic is said to have “collapsed” health systems in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, showing how weak and under-funded they were even before this year's outbreak.

  After a Senior US State Department Official on September 25 said that the US' PEPFAR funding had strengthen health systems allowing prior Ebola outbreaks in East Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo to be rapidly contained, Inner City Press asked the official what the US and PEPFAR had been doing in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

  The US official said ruefully, “Pepfar does not have resources in those three countries. They had very low HIV prevalence from the beginning and were not a significant investment country. Over the last several years we have have been investing $500,000 a year in Sierra Leone to support their TB laboratory diagnosis. But we've had very limited support of those countries.”

  And that may be one of the problems. Click here to view map.

  Looking forward, the UN says 4000 of its staff applied by a September 24 to be deployed to the new UNMEER Ebola response mission, to be headquartered in Accra, Ghana. Inner City Press asked a Senior State Department Official -- a different one -- how the US' 4000 people will interface with the UN mission. (Click here for Inner City Press' story on what this other US official said about South Sudan.)

  The US official replied, “we are working closely with UN, we have to coordinate. The UN will put its headquarters in Accra. USAID will have some people working closely with, embedded with them in Accra.”

  Now that US has in essence adopted Liberia, sending 4000 people to respond to Ebola, with the UK similar adopting its former colony Sierra Leone, and France its former colony Guinea, the question arises or remains how these countries were left so under-developed. Watch this site.

   

On Ghana, IMF Tells ICP Visit to Accra Is Ongoing, Half Answer on Ukraine, Egypt Article IV, Ebola Board Meeting Tomorrow

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 25 -- With Ghana hosting an International Monetary Fund visit, Inner City Press asked IMF Spokesperson Gerry Rice at his embargoed briefing on September 25 about what Ghana’s President John Mahama said this week at the New York Stock Exchange: "It is my hope that by January we should start a three-year IMF programme to try and stabilise the macroeconomic environment.”

Rice took the question from Inner City Press and said yes, an IMF team is in Accra discussing a program, and will have something to say once the visit concludes.

Inner City Press also submitted this question: “Ukraine PM Yatseniuk yesterday said, 'We do understand that we have to readjust the program. Because when we started the program with the IMF, it was a peace program. For today, this is a wartime government and a wartime program.' What is the IMF's response to / comment on this?”

While Rice said that there was no request for any “readjustment” yet, that the IMF will combine two reviews in November with an eye toward its Executive Board meeting on Ukraine at the end of the year or early 2015. He said the purpose of such reviews, generally, is readjustment.

But Rice did in this answer address the appropriateness of IMF lending into what Yatseniuk calls “ a wartime government and a wartime program.” We'll have more on this.

The IMF's Executive Board will meet on September 26 about Ebola, on which Rice answered Inner City Press' questions four weeks ago. Rice said indeed, the IMF is discussing an “Article IV” with Egypt, and hopes it will be before the end of the year. The IMF's head of communications Conny Lotze is heading to the ECB in Frankfurt. And so it goes at the IMF.