Situation Overview
According to the latest WHO Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report, a total of 7,178 cases have been reported in the current outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in West Africa; WHO has advised that despite the opening of new Ebola Treatment Units, an urgent need for over, 000 additional beds for treatment remains in the affected countries (Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone).
Advance teams of t he United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) have deployed to mission headquarters in Accra, Ghana and the affected countries. The Special Representative of the UN Secretary General (SRSG) and head of UNMEER, Anthony Banbury, has deployed to Accra with the advance team. He is scheduled to travel to all three countries, with the WFP Regional Director (3 October Sierra Leone, 7-8 October Guinea).
WFP is augmenting its capacity to support the humanitarian response and provide support to UNMEER efforts to stop the spread of Ebola. Besides providing Logistics Cluster coordination, information management, and Common Services, as the Cluster lead agency, WFP is also providing procurement, engineering, staging areas and hubs, air transport, supply chain and emergency telecommunications capacity, to enable the health sector to reach affected people across the affected countries.
On 2 October, the WFP Executive Director approved the Special Operation (SO 200773; Common Logistics Services for the Humanitarian Community’s Response to the Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak in West Africa); required funding for these common services over the next five months, is now estimated at approximately USD87 million.
The humanitarian community has been given three months government approval , for a humanitarian corridor between Dakar, Senegal and the three affected countries ; the first UNHAS flight took place on 25 September and regular flights will commence on 7 October with flights on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The new regional UNHAS schedule (including flights from Dakar and Accra) is available on the website: www.logcluster.org/ops/ebola14
