The World
Bank on Tuesday pledged further assistance to Liberia, the country worst hit by
Ebola, and revealed that the epidemic would cost more than $2 billion across
the region, causing once-booming economies to slow down or shrink.
The report comes as the World Bank Group’s president, Jim Yong Kim, begins a two-day visit to West Africa to discuss ways of addressing the outbreak, which has already killed more than 6,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
After a meeting with Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Monrovia, Kim promised additional support to Liberia in the healthcare, infrastructure and agricultural sectors over the next 18 months.
Ebola-hit Sierra Leone has quarantined hundreds of thousands more citizens, it said Tuesday, sealing off a sixth district, with more than half of the country’s population already under lockdown.
Tonkolili, in the centre, was added to the growing list of districts where no one is allowed to leave or enter without special dispensation, in an effort to combat an outbreak which is spiralling out of control, with 1,400 deaths so far.
