Graded IR Class

"We are losing the battle," World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim warned, blaming a lack of international solidarity in efforts to stem the epidemic.

"Certain countries are only worried about their own borders," he told reporters in Paris.

The East African Community bloc comprising Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania announced it was sending more than 600 health workers to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

This follows a memorandum of understanding between the Government of Sierra Leone and the UN Agencies to implement the US$ 28 million World Bank-funded Ebola Response Project, of which US$ 9.5 million was allocated to WFP to deliver food and non-food items.

The World Bank partnership with government and the UN Agencies is part of concerted efforts to stop the rapid spread of Ebola Virus Disease in Sierra Leone. It seeks to scale up the country's logistical and operational capacity and mitigate the economic impact on affected communities.

The first component, support to the EVD outbreak response plans and strengthening essential health services will contribute to finance critical gaps in ongoing emergency response efforts funded by governments and development partners in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

he second component, human resources scale up for outbreak response and essential health services will supplement the efforts of governments and other partners to motivate and reward health workers in the affected countries to work on the EVD emergency response and provide other essential health services.

The third component, provision of food and basic supplies to quarantined populations and EVD affected household's aims to improve access to food and other basic supplies for the EVD affected households in the quarantined areas and other hot zones in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. 

A senior European diplomat in Geneva involved in health issues, who was not authorized to speak publicly, lamented the limited international response. “The scale of the epidemic is what the international community is still not getting,” the diplomat said. “It’s becoming obvious that what you need is to scale up by a factor of 20. There’s not enough international coordination and imagination going into this.”

uba sent 165 doctors and nurses last week, China has expanded a medical team deployed there, and British personnel are scouting sites for at least five new centers and 700 additional beds that will bring the total closer to the World Health Organization’s target of about 1,300 beds.

United States delivers on a pledge to provide up to 17 100-bed units, said Dr. Ian Norton, who is coordinating foreign medical teams for the W.H.O. In Guinea, the W.H.O. says there are four treatment centers working with 160 beds available, with 100 more beds needed.

The Security Council in September passed a resolution that declared Ebola a threat to international peace and security. On Tuesday, it heard sobering alarms about Ebola’s widening impact on the region.

Hervé Ladsous, the under secretary general for peacekeeping, told the Council that 39 peacekeepers in Liberia were currently “under quarantine or are being closely watched for possible exposure.”

While the United States, Canada and Britain have taken emergency steps to screen international passengers to limit the risk of importing Ebola, most of Europe is still struggling with that issue.

The W.H.O.’s goal is what it calls “70-70-60” — safe burials for 70 percent of victims, and 70 percent of suspected cases isolated, within 60 days of the date it set this goal.

Kennedy was the first of five American airports to introduce Ebola screening protocols, and the new measures were the latest indication of the risk that the disease presented.

Beginning next week, Washington Dulles, Newark Liberty, Chicago O’Hare and Atlanta international airports will employ the same screenings as those put in place at J.F.K.

Since at least the 14th century, when the bubonic plague devastated Europe, posting medical officers at a port of entry has been one of the main tools used to try to halt the spread of disease.An outbreak of yellow fever in 1878 led the United States Congress to grant the federal government the authority to order a quarantine to prevent its spread.