Blog: Last week's Ebola conference in Brussels - Hoofdinhoud

From emergency to recovery

Last week the EU organised an international conference on overcoming the current Ebola crisis in West Africa in paving the way for rapid recovery. Over 1.000 participants from some 150 delegations attended - including 69 countries that contribute to the fight against Ebola, four presidents from African countries and more than 50 ministers as well as the Queen Mathilda of Belgium. Through organising this conference, the EU underlined its strong commitment to assist the countries concerned in their efforts to rapidly overcome the Ebola crisis.

There was broad agreement that the crisis is not over. We need to continue our efforts to overcome the outbreak and bring infections down to zero. But it was also clear that a lot has been achieved in recent months, and that the EU has played an important role in mobilising a response. This reaches from providing treatment to infected people, to mobilising in-kind assistance; from medical evacuation to providing mobile laboratories; from raising awareness to reinforcing preparedness; from efforts on medical research and development for Ebola treatments to entry/exit airport scanning; etc.

From early on we have also been using our development tools to support early post-Ebola recovery - and we need to ensure that this recovery is sustainable, with lasting improvements in the health and educations systems and a return to economic growth from which all parts of society can benefit.

At the conference we agreed that a number of additional actions are needed to end the epidemic and outlined a set of principles to guide the recovery of the region. These development principles included: strengthening governance (including through decentralisation), rehabilitating social sectors and stabilising the economies.

In the margins of the conference I handed over a truck mobile laboratory that will now be sent to West Africa. There it will first be used in Guinea for Ebola virus detection and later remain in the region to train local specialists on diagnosis of highly dangerous pathogens.

Together with President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Amara Konneh I also signed the National Indicative Programme for EU development cooperation with Liberia for the period 2014-2020, which amounts to €279 million. It is a sign of our continued strong commitment to the countries in the region and has as one key priority to bolster areas which are essential for recovering from the medium and long term consequences of the Ebola epidemic.

I sincerely hope that we can defeat the deadly virus soon and am confident that last week's conference served as a significant milestone towards sustainable recovery.