"Don’t isolate affected countries, isolate Ebola" - World Bank President admonishes global community

The President of the World Bank Group, Jim Yong Kim, has admonished the global community not to isolate the countries affected by the Ebola epidemic, but should instead isolate the disease through a swift, and collective international effort.

Kim said only a concerted and urgent international effort can stop the Ebola virus spread and transition to a global pandemic.


Describing Ebola as a worse epidemic than HIV/AIDS, Kim called on individuals, nations, multilateral institutions, and groups across the globe to pick up the pace and deploy every human and material resources required to halt the disease from further spreading in the affected countries and beyond.

Kim spoke at the concluding press conference at the 2014 annual meetings of the IMF/World Bank, where he summed the overall message as “Let’s pick up the pace and do whatever it takes to stop this outbreak.

“When your house is on fire, you don’t put up a wet towel underneath the door. You send firefighters. It’s the same with the fight against Ebola. We need to send in large numbers of trained health workers, who can extinguish the outbreak.

“The way to fight Ebola isn’t to close off borders. Instead, we need to offer the best treatment possible for those infected inside the most affected countries. We should isolate Ebola, not Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

“We also should once again remind everyone that Africa remains open for business, and that our projections for economic growth for 2015 and 2016 are 5.2 per cent annually, up from 4.6 per cent this year,” the World Bank chief said.

Kim said the economic heat of Ebola was already being felt by Spain, advising that humanitarian response should be urgently deployed to the most-hit countries.

“If you have anything to do, do it now. The more you wait, the worse it gets,” the World Bank chief executive admonished.

He stated that the World Bank had demonstrated a sense of urgency by fast tracking the movement of funds meant to assist the affected countries combat the disease.

Credit: Ndubuisi Francis/ThisDay