Cost of Ebola to Africa could reach $32.6 bln: World Bank

WASHINGTON // The economic impact of the Ebola epidemic could reach $32.6 billion (Dh120 billion) by the end of next year if the disease ravaging Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone spreads to neighbouring countries in West Africa, the World Bank Group said on Wednesday.

The World Bank’s assessment said the economic impact of Ebola is already serious in the three countries and could be catastrophic if it becomes a more regional health crisis.

“With Ebola’s potential to inflict massive economic costs on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and the rest of their neighbours in West Africa, the international community must find ways to get past logistical roadblocks and bring in more doctors and trained medical staff, more hospital beds and more health and development support to help stop Ebola in its tracks,” said Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank.

He added that the enormous economic cost of the current outbreak to the affected countries and the world “could have been avoided by prudent ongoing investment in strengthening health care systems”.

It is far from certain that the epidemic will be contained by the end of the year, so the report estimated the economic costs of two scenarios as the battle against the disease continues. The report estimated that the economic impact could top $9 billion if the disease is rapidly contained in the three most severely affected countries, but could reach $32.6 billion if it takes a long time to contain Ebola in the three countries and it spreads to neighbouring nations.

The economic impact could be limited if immediate national and international action stops the epidemic and alleviates the fear factor, the report said. Fear about the disease is causing neighbouring countries to close their borders and airlines and businesses to suspend their commercial activities in the three worst-affected countries.

The World Health Organisation estimates that Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people in West Africa and infected at least twice that many.

Meanwhile, on the education front, Sierra Leone on Tuesday launched an ambitious schooling effort for more than a million children denied their education due to the epidemic, saying lessons would be delivered via radio.

Classes in a variety of subjects will be broadcast for four hours, six days a week, on 41 radio stations and the country’s sole TV channel, the government announced.

“The plan is to provide a suitable option for our school-going population as the entire school system has been disrupted since the outbreak of the Ebola disease,” said education minister Minkailu Bah.

Schools have been closed since the government announced a state of emergency in July in response to the epidemic, which has killed 3,500 people in west Africa, more than 600 of them in Sierra Leone.

More than two million of its population of 5.7 million are aged between three and 17, although in reality the secondary school attendance rate is less than 40 per cent for both boys and girls.

Mr Bah also admitted that reaching many of the nation’s schoolchildren would be difficult in a country where radio ownership is around 25 per cent and fewer than two per cent have access to a television.

But with no end in sight to the epidemic, which has also engulfed Guinea and Liberia, Sierra Leone’s economy and the education of its future workforce are in peril.

“As things now are we cannot expect schools to reopen until early 2015,” said Sylvester Meheaux, of the Conference of Principals of Secondary Schools that is helping the government run the classes.

“In the meantime, we are worried some children would end up being dropouts, pregnant and otherwise. These developments are a major concern for us in the educational sector.”

Public reaction to the announcement – which did not include details of how the scheme would be funded – has been mixed.

“This is not the type of tuition we used to know for our children, but we have little option,” said Sam Mbayo, a retired clerk from the eastern district of Kailahun.

“Any means to educate our children rather than leaving them idle is welcome. Otherwise we are going to have a generation of illiterates.”

Fatima Sheriff, a single mother from Freetown, said she was worried in particular about the damage the closures of schools was doing to the prospects of young girls.

“For many of them this is the end of their educational dreams as the choice of the going into prostituion and other vices loom,” she said.

Manuel Fontaine, the regional director of the UN children’s fund (Unicef), which is supporting the initiative, said the radio classes would be focused on teaching children “life skills” and maintaining their contact with the outside world.

But, he added, it was important that schools reopened as soon as possible, “partly because there is a problem of long-term damage in children who have no education, and because there is a risk that children will drop out of school, of education in general”.

Mr Bah said Sierra Leone authorities would “be devising other means [of] accommodating the hard-to-reach areas” without access to radios.

“We are quite aware that not all children will benefit from this method of teaching, but we are doing our best to reach as many children as possible,” he said.

* Associated Press and Associated Press