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Statement by World Bank Group
President Jim Yong Kim At Joint
Press Conference on Ebola with
Ghanaian Vice President H.E.
Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur
October 30, 2014

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim
Joint Press Conference on Ebola
Accra, Ghana

As Prepared for Delivery

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for coming. I’m very happy to be back in Accra. My
last visit was almost exactly a decade ago, when I was working at the World Health
Organization. Today, I have met with senior government officials, including Vice President
Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, and I will meet with the UN team based in Accra – UNMEER
-- that is coordinating the Ebola response. I want to especially thank the government of
Ghana for taking such an important role in the response to this outbreak – by being the host
of UNMEER and by setting up a humanitarian air bridge into Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra
Leone. History will record the importance of what Ghana has done – that it has kept open
an important link to the three countries at a time when many countries around the world
have closed their borders.

Today, I have an important announcement linked to the Ebola crisis. The World Bank Group
will be making an additional $100 million dollars available to fill a critical gap in the Ebola
response – funding to speed up deployment of foreign health workers to Guinea, Liberia,
and Sierra Leone.
With this latest grant, the World Bank Group’s funding for the Ebola fight over the last three
months is now more than $500 million dollars.

In recent weeks, the international response to Ebola crisis has improved significantly. We
have had some good news recently out of Liberia, involving a drop in recorded cases,
although we should watch this very closely as this epidemic has had a history of surge in
numbers of cases. As for the overall response, several major gaps remain and one of the
largest is mobilizing enough international health teams to the three countries in order to
contain the epidemic. The health workers are needed to treat and care for patients, boost
local health capacity, manage Ebola treatment centers, and resume essential health
services for non-Ebola conditions.

Current estimates by the United Nations indicate that the three countries need about 5,000
foreign health workers to fight Ebola, who in the coming months will rotate through very
difficult assignments in the expanding Ebola treatment centers, community-based care,
burial teams, and laboratory services.

I have just spent the last three days in the Horn of Africa, where I heard some especially
encouraging news about Africa’s response to the Ebola outbreak. First, African Union
Commission Chairperson Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma committed to help deploy 2,000
trained health workers from African countries to the affected nations. I commend Dr. Zuma
and the Africa Union for taking a leadership role in setting a firm target to bring health
workers from the continent to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. And second, I heard from
Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta that 600 health workers in his country have volunteered to
work in the affected areas. Many more African countries also are ready to send health
workers to the frontlines of this epidemic. This kind of solidarity from Africa is what will beat
this outbreak.

We now need to take such important pledges such as Dr. Zuma’s and turn them into action.
We need to find a way to manage and train health workers for their rapid deployment to the
affected areas. We need to work with the affected countries, UNMEER, and the WHO to
use our $100 million dollars to help create a surge of trained health workers that we see so
rarely – we saw it in the successful campaign to eradicate smallpox; we have seen it around
the world in the efforts to eradicate polio; we saw it to a degree in the response to other
outbreaks such as SARS and H1N1. But this surge is more complicated than any before it.
This surge needs to be equal to the challenge of Ebola, and to do that it needs dedicated
health workers from around the world. They are heroes, and they will meet this challenge,
which is unlike any I have ever seen.

I have no doubt that we can do this. We have no choice. We must contain this outbreak
now.

Thank you very much. I’d now like Anthony Banbury, who Special Representative to the
Secretary-General and Head of the UNMEER here in Ghana, to say a few words and then
I’ll be happy to take your questions.