Prez Mahama tasks ECOWAS meeting for effective Ebola solution

President John Dramani Mahama has charged the Extraordinary Session of Ecowas Heads of State and Government ongoing in Accra to produce the most effective solution to tackle the Ebola virus scourge.

President Mahama said the immediate purpose of the meeting was to ensure that all aid provided to help deal with the disease was put to “the best possible use” by assessing what is needed, matching it with what has been offered and identifying the gaps that remain so that they too, could be filled to effectively and efficiently bring an end to the terrible epidemic.

Beyond that task however, he said Ebola threatens to decimate the economies of the sub-regional countries in such a manner that the threat needed to be confronted and dealt with.

President Mahama made the call in his remarks to open the two-day extraordinary session holding at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra.

He said the deadly disease has rendered large numbers of the labour force of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three nations most affected by Ebola - unable to work as a result of infection or quarantine measures, virtually crumbling their economies.

He said crops for this season were not harvested in these countries and the crops for coming seasons have not been planted either, which means that the suffering wrought by Ebola will last long after the epidemic has ended.

“And because the economies of all the nations in the subregion are connected, that suffering will resound throughout all of West Africa, including the countries without any recorded cases of Ebola.”

According to President Mahama, what is most unfortunate about the occurrence of the Ebola epidemic in the three countries is that “these were countries recovering from the effects of conflict, countries whose infrastructures were already greatly lacking. With this in mind, the discussion of aid must include a plan for the future sustainability of these nations. We cannot and must not leave them as the disease found them. To do so would make all of our efforts and all of our assistance virtually meaningless as it would leave these countries, once again, vulnerable and defenseless against the threat of any future health crises.”

The disease has so far claimed 4,951 lives from an estimated 13,567 reported cases by the World Health Organization. Click to read President Mahama's full address here.