Italy has pledged 300,000 euros to support the United Nations World Health Organisation's operations in the Ebola-hit Democratic Republic of Congo, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
The funds will go towards medical treatment for Ebola victims, and immunisation and burials in “sanitised” conditions carried out by WHO in the North Kivu and Ituri regions of DRC, according to the statement.
Italy pledged the new funds at a donor conference in Genoa at the request of deputy foreign and overseas aid minister Emanuela Del Re, the statement said.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday it was considering declaring DRC's Ebola epidemic a “public health emergency of international concern” after the year-old outbreak reached Goma, a heavily populated city one kilometre from the border with Rwanda.
Over the weekend, an infected man arrived in Goma, which has a population of nearly 2 million, an international airport and ferry and bus routes connecting it with much of the region.
