The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has announced that it is preparing to pay an additional $ 150 million dollars to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak.
“In Guinea and Sierra Leone, the Fund’s financial assistance programs will be increased (…) In Liberia, considering a one-time payment as part of the emergency credit facility,” said Charles Amo-Yartey to Reuters.
These funds should be made available in the first quarter of 2015. In September 2014, the IMF had paid $ 130 million for the fight against Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 8,235 people for 20, 747 recorded cases, according to the latest report of the World Health organization (WHO).
Note that researchers from the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine estimated in a study published on the 22nd December, that the austerity policies budget imposed by the IMF have weakened health systems in African countries with a hardest hit by the Ebola virus.
In response to these accusations, the IMF spokesman responded that the organization’s mandate does not specifically included the area of health and was “totally wrong” to say that the spread of Ebola was “a consequence of the institution’s policy.”