KEY POINTS
Mali has placed around 600 people who may have been exposed to Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) under daily surveillance.
The EU on Monday announced a new € 29 million funding package for the EVD response.
A total of 14,413 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of EVD have been reported in 8 countries. There have been 5,177 reported deaths.
The United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) mourns the passing of Marcel Rudasingwa, Assistant Secretary-General and the mission's Emergency Crisis Manager in Guinea.
UNMEER SRSG Anthony Banbury said that in just a short space of time, Mr. Rudasingwa played a pivotal role in the Organization's and the international community's response to the Ebola crisis in Guinea. A Rwandan national and career UNICEF employee, Mr. Rudasingwa passed away on Sunday night in his hotel room in Conakry. It has been confirmed that his death was not related to Ebola
Key Political and Economic Developments
Mali said Monday it had placed nearly 600 people who may have been exposed to EVD under daily surveillance as the country battles to contain the spread of the virus. After the deaths of a Guinean imam and the Malian nurse who treated him in the capital Bamako, a friend who had visited the imam in the Pasteur clinic also died of probable EVD, while a doctor at the clinic who contracted the disease is undergoing treatment. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, on a visit to the imam's home village of Kouremale on the Mali-Guinea border, urged locals to take all precautions in "the war" against Ebola. “We will not close the border, but don't let anyone enter Mali without having washed their hands or taken their temperature," the president told medical workers.
The US added Mali to the list of countries whose travelers face special EVD screening on arrival, along with Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the three most affected countries in the outbreak. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security announced the provision, for roughly 15 daily arrivals out of Mali, saying that there have been a number of confirmed cases of EVD in Mali in recent days, and a large number of individuals may have been exposed to those cases. There are no direct flights from Mali to the US.
The EU on Monday announced € 12 million (US$ 15 million) in funding for Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast "to help them prepare for the risk of an Ebola outbreak through early detection and public awareness measures". The funding was part of a new € 29 million package for West Africa as a whole, which comes on top of the € 1 billion previously announced by the EU and its member states.
The remainder of the funding will go to transporting aid and equipment to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea and for evacuating infected international aid workers to hospitals in Europe.
