Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

DR Congo

CERF allocates $10 million to support regional Ebola response in central Africa

Attachments

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock today announced a US$10 million regional contribution from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) towards mitigating the possible impact of the current Ebola outbreak should it spread to countries neighbouring the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

“The response agencies, led by the World Health Organization [WHO], are doing a remarkable job in containing the Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC, but it is important to support neighbouring countries too. Early action financed by the CERF is a priority, given the major impact the virus could have if it should spread to neighbouring countries,” Mr. Lowcock said.

“These funds are very timely as we are accelerating preparedness activities in neighbouring countries,” said the WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “I thank the Emergency Relief Coordinator for releasing this contribution from CERF and call on other donors to follow OCHA’s example. We need your continued financial support to end this outbreak and won’t relent until the job is done.”

The $10 million allocation is in addition to $4.5 million already allocated by CERF to UN agencies inside DRC at the early onset of the outbreaks in Equateur and North Kivu provinces earlier this year. CERF’s timely funding enabled WHO, UNICEF and WFP to rapidly scale up critical health action such as surveillance, treatment, community mobilization and crisis communication, and also supported logistics services.

For further information, please contact: Ann Weru, Public Information Officer, weru@un.org

Disclaimer

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
To learn more about OCHA's activities, please visit https://www.unocha.org/.