Investment in universal healthcare: Improving health systems in three Ebola-hit African countries would have cost a third of relief effort there, says new Save the Children report

THE GUARDIAN      by Lisa O'Connell                                                                   March 3, 015
Up to 30 countries are vulnerable to an Ebola-style epidemic, unless the world sits up and helps get urgent investment into universal healthcare, a report (pdf) has found.

Health workers who have returned from west Africa and colleagues based in the UK walk to Westminster in support of Save the Children’s campaign to strengthen health systems globally. Photograph: Jeff Moore/Save the Children

Improving the health systems in the three Ebola-hit African nations would have helped to prevent the epidemic and cost a third of the relief effort, says Save the Children in a new investigation of the epidemic that has claimed more than 9,500 lives.

It found that £2.8bn had been spent on aid, compared with the £1bn it would have cost to improve basic healthcare in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

It warned that Ebola was among the “high-profile threats that alarm the world”, not least because of the panic the virus sowed around the globe, but that countries, some poorer than the western African nations, suffer “a daily burden of death and disease” caused by lack of basic health facilities.

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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/mar/03/ebola-epidemic-is-wake-up-call-for-investment-in-universal-healthcare

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http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/sites/default/files/images/A-Wake-Up-Call.pdf