TheCable

The African Union (AU) on Saturday created a $750-million special fund for curbing the spread of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in some parts of West Africa.

Dlamini Zuma, the chairperson of the AU Commission, announced this shortly after a business round table with members of the private sector at the AU Headquarters in Addis Ababa on Saturday.

The commission had invited the private sector to raise the funds as part of effort to deploy more volunteer workers to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The commission observed the virus had infected some 13,000 people and killed 4,900 so far.

It also deployed 146 volunteers on the platform of AU programme on Ebola to the affected countries within the last two months.

Zuma said that the fund would be managed by a private sector-led board while the AfDB would administer it.

The private sector, led by the African Development Bank (AfDB), made commitment to immediately raise $28.5 million to facilitate the deployment of an initial 1,000 volunteers to the three countries.

Donald Kaberuka, president of AfDB; Carloz Lopez, the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa; and Jean-Luis Ekra, president of Afrexim Bank, were among the leaders who attended the event.