The United Nations said on Tuesday that an Ebola outbreak could \u200bcost Africa up to $3.6 billion and hundreds of \u200cthousands of jobs, potentially causing a development crisis.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which there is no tested \u200bvaccine or treatment, has infected 1,307 people and \u200bkilled 377 in the Democratic Republic of Congo \u2060since being declared on May 15, the government says.<\/p>\n
A \u200bmuch smaller number of cases have been reported in \u200bUganda and experts warn of the possibility of it spreading to other neighbours, such as South Sudan.<\/p>\n
“If we have the resources \u200band we step up, we can contain this outbreak \u200band prevent further losses,” said Damien Mama, United Nations Development Programme resident representative \u200cin \u2060Congo.<\/p>\n
“If we do not, this health emergency risks becoming a much deeper and prolonged development crisis across the region and potentially the continent.”<\/p>\n
The UNDP outlined three \u200bscenarios for the \u200boutbreak. In \u2060the best scenario, where the epidemic remains contained in the two countries, the \u200bcost is $1 billion for Congo’s GDP, the report \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
In \u2060the worst-case scenario, the disease spreads to countries including Rwanda and Angola and coincides with higher fuel costs linked \u2060to \u200bthe\u00a0Iran crisis, cutting continental GDP \u200bby $3.6 billion and resulting in 328,000 job losses, the report said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Nations said on Tuesday that an Ebola outbreak could \u200bcost Africa up to $3.6 billion and hundreds of \u200cthousands of jobs, potentially causing a development crisis. The\u00a0outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which there is no tested \u200bvaccine or treatment, has infected 1,307 people and \u200bkilled 377 in the Democratic Republic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1312,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,2854],"tags":[3016,75],"class_list":["post-21252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-health","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc","tag-ebola"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21253,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21252\/revisions\/21253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}