Brussels, 14/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - The end of the Ebola virus in West Africa, announced by the World Health Organization on Thursday 14 January, has been welcomed by the European Union. The EU will not, however, lower its guard, the European Commission immediately stated.
The Commission will continue to help the African countries affected, focusing development aid on the needs of the survivors, and in a month's time it will launch the European Medical Corps to enable the swift deployment of teams and medical equipment for any future health emergencies. This was confirmed to the press by European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides, who is also the EU coordinator for the response to Ebola.
It is the absence of any new Ebola virus in Liberia for 42 consecutive days that has led the WHO to make this announcement. It is a major step that has already been made in Guinea (in November 2015) and Sierra Leone (in December).
Stylianides was delighted about the success of a year's collective fight against this epidemic. Ebola has decimated the populations and hit the economies of the countries affected in West Africa. “This day one year ago, the end of the Ebola epidemic may have seemed unimaginable. But thanks to the effort of health workers, ordinary people, and governments in the three affected countries, combined with an unprecedented international response, the fight against the disease has been won”, he said paying tribute “to all those involved for months to bring the cases to zero”.
European Medical Corps is the instrument for the future. Stylianides nevertheless said that despite this good news there could be no room for complacency because “the risk of re-infection is much greater than we thought, as Liberia's various relapses since May 2015 have shown”. According to Stylianides, lessons should be learnt from this crisis in order to remedy the shortfalls that appeared in the response in 2014. Regional cooperation should be supported. “Perhaps as early as next month, the Commission will set up a European Medical Corps. This will be the most symbolic action, the most important and efficient tool to face the next outbreak of Ebola. We are ready to engage and to utilise this instrument in all aspects of our work”, he said.
In response to the Ebola epidemic, the EU and its member states have mobilised around €2 billion in humanitarian aid, technical expertise, long term development aid, and research for vaccines and treatments (see EUROPE 11463). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)