UK pledges additional £50 million to help contain Ebola outbreak in Congo

Sept 1 (Reuters) – Britain said on Tuesday it would provide more than £50 million ($67.56 million) in new funding to support efforts to contain an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where confirmed cases have surpassed 6,000 in the country’s largest-ever epidemic.

• Britain allocated up to £20 million to the Ebola response in May, and the latest funding brings its total contribution to £78 million.

• The funding will support disease surveillance, frontline health workers, treatment access, infection control, community outreach and safe burials, Britain’s Foreign Office said.

• British public health experts have been deployed in Congo to support the efforts.

• “As the outbreak intensifies, we are accelerating our response to match the pace and scale of the challenge,” Britain’s Minister for Africa Kirsty McNeill said.

• The epidemic – the second-largest and fastest-spreading on record – was caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there are no approved vaccines or treatments.

($1 = 0.7401 pounds)

(Reporting by Sumedha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Jamie Freed)