US- Donors Pledge Billions for Ebola Recovery

(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency) United Nations said the international community has pledged more than $3.4 billion in additional funds to help three West African states recover from the Ebola epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people and devastated their economies.

The meeting convened by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at U.N. Headquarters in New York raised an additional $3.4 billion in pledges to help in the recovery efforts of the three countries affected by Ebola.

The finance ministers of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone had requested $3.2 billion to support a strategy aimed at getting their countries to zero infections for the next 24 months.

But at the end of the session, donor countries and international agencies had pledged well above what many analysts had predicted.

Conference pledges, combined with earlier promised donations bring the total funds pledged to $5.18 billion.

Speaking after the conference, Helen Clark, head of the U.N. Development Program, said the conference went beyond financing "to forge new partnerships in support of recovery" between affected countries and donor partners, Voice of America said.