EU donates €140m to Africa’s Ebola cause

As part of efforts to tackle the highly-contagious Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), the European Union (EU) has donated about €140m to help fight the disease ravaging a number of West African countries.

The fund is to be used to enhance health systems, train health workers and pay for mobile testing laboratories in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Guinea, the countries hit by an epidemic that has claimed about 2,000 lives since February.

While Nigeria has been commended for an effective control of the situation, the virus has overstretched health sectors of the other three countries, thus spreading at an alarming rate.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has pleaded that the blood of survivors of the virus should be used in the treatment of infected persons, as antibodies in the blood of a survivor can help fight off an Ebola infection.

According to WHO, antibodies can be transferred from a survivor to a sick patient to boost his/her immune system.