Almost $2.9 billion was pledged by the end of 2014 in donations to fight West Africa's Ebola epidemic, yet only around 40 per cent had actually reached affected countries, researchers said on Tuesday.
A study by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that tracked international donations showed barely $1.09 billion had reached the worst affected countries by the end of last year, they said.
"These delays ... may have contributed to spread of the virus and could have increased the financial needs," said Karen Grepin, a global health policy expert at New York University who led the study and published it in the BMJ British medical journal.
Ms Grepin analysed the level and speed of pledges made to fight Ebola and how they aligned with estimates of funds required to control the epidemic.
While Guinea first informed the World Health Organization of a "rapidly evolving outbreak" of Ebola on March 23, 2014, the first major international appeal was not until August, when some $71 million was asked for.
"Clearly, international leaders have found it challenging to estimate the financial requirements to tackle this rapidly spreading outbreak," Ms Grepin said in a commentary about her findings. "The problem has not been the generosity of donors but that the resources have not been deployed rapidly enough."
© Thomson Reuters 2015
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