Africa Resilience Initiative

REUTERS  -- By Roberta Rampton                                                                      Dec. 2, 2014

WASHINGTON --President Barack Obama on Tuesday will press Congress to approve $6.18 billion in emergency funding to help fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and prepare U.S. hospitals to handle future cases.

Most of the request is aimed at the immediate response to the disease at home and abroad. But the package also includes $1.5 billion in contingency funds - money that could become a target if lawmakers decide to trim the bill.

"That is the part of the package that is most at risk," said Sam Worthington, president of InterAction, an alliance of U.S. non-governmental aid groups.

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BBC    By   Mark Doyle                                                                                                        Dec. 1, 2014

Tony Banbury declined to say if targets he had set in the fight against Ebola, to be achieved by Monday, had been met.

The targets were for the proportion of people being treated and for the safe burial of highly infectious bodies.

In October, Mr Banbury told the UN Security Council that by 1 December, "70% of all those infected by the disease must be under treatment and 70% of the victims safely buried if the outbreak is to be successfully arrested".

Mr Banbury said the 70% targets were being met in "the vast majority" of areas in the three worst-affected countries - Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

"But in some areas", he said, "including here in Sierra Leone - especially in the capital Freetown and in the town of Port Loko - we are falling short. And it is in those areas where we really need to focus our assets and our capabilities".

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NEW YORK TIMES -- BY Adam Nossiter                                                                    Dec. 1, 2014                          
Description of the way that President Alpha Conde, after intially minmizing the Ebola threat, "is mustering a late-career tenacity to confront the deadly epidemic that still infects hundreds in this battered West African nation."

                            “While shaving I think of Ebola, while eating I think of Ebola,” said President Alpha Condé of Guinea. The response of nearby nations helped galvanize Mr. Condé. Credit Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/world/africa/ebola-now-preoccupies-once-skeptical-leader-in-guinea.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0