Kinshasa: KOREA has pledged half a million United States dollars to the World Health Organisation (WHO) to ramp up its fight against the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Statistics show that there have been 695 Ebola deaths in DRC’s North Kivu and Itiru provinces since August 2018, a case fatality rate of nearly 63 percent.
Of the 695 deaths, 58% were women and 29% were aged below 18, the most vulnerable groups.
“This cash assistance from the Republic of Korea (ROK) government will be used funding the Strategic Response Plan 3.0 (SRP-3), devised by the Ministry of Health of the DRC in collaboration with 15 international organizations, including WHO,” the ROK government said in a statement.
“The ROK government has actively participated in the international efforts to curb the spread of infectious diseases such as Ebola.
“The past contributions are including, but not limited to, the dispatch of the Korea Disaster Relief Team (KDRT) in 2014 to fight the EVD outbreak in West Africa, and the cash assistance of a total of 1.5 million USD – of which 1m USD for WHO’s CFE (Contingency Fund for Emergencies) – in 2018 to address the EVD outbreak in the DRC.”
The Ebola outbreak in DRC is the tenth in recent years.
