UNICEF Australia applauds the Federal Government’s expected announcement, today, to assist voluntary medical workers travelling to Sierra Leone to staff a new field hospital for Ebola patients.
UNICEF Australia also applauds the willingness of Australia’s medical fraternity to aid affected countries in this emergency – both through a willingness to be offer professional skills in the field, but also to support the response financially.
UNICEF is doubling the number of staff deployed to the Ebola emergency to 600 in coming months and welcomes the expertise of fellow medical responders and skilled humanitarian workers from Australia.
In addition, UNICEF Australia supporter, Twice the Doctor Foundation, will next month launch a new initiative to financially support medically-trained staff in Sierra Leone and other Ebola-affected countries.
Twice the Doctor Foundation has kept Australia’s medical professionals informed of the needs in Ebola-affected countries and on December 8 – marking four months of the emergency – Twice the Doctor Foundation will call on Australian doctors to give a day’s pay to fund the ongoing work of medical and health care professionals in West Africa’s Ebola-affected countries.
Australian national and UNICEF’s Ebola emergency co-ordinator Dr Peter Salama said while children account for one-fifth of confirmed 14 000 Ebola cases, many more suffered the indirect consequences through losing parents, being stigmatised and ostracised, school closures and a general disruption in their daily lives.
“Death is all around them,” Dr Salama said. “Life as they knew it has simply been turned upside down.”
More than five million children across the three worst affected countries have also been out of school because of Ebola and are often not even allowed to play outside for fear of contracting the disease, he said.
“I don’t think we can in any way, shape or form, overestimate the psychosocial impact of the crisis on children in affected countries,” Dr Salama said.
UNICEF, as the United Nations Children’s Fund, working in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and surrounding countries, said more than 20 per cent of the confirmed cases were children under 17 years of age.
In Sierra Leone, as at October 29, the number of laboratory confirmed cases of Ebola was 3,760 cases, with 1,057 deaths. The total number of confirmed cases of Ebola in West Africa is currently 13,567. (Source: WHO, October 31)
UNICEF Australia does not deploy medical or emergency staff but Australians do bring their expertise in child health, child protection, HIV/AIDS and emergency experience to UNICEF’s response and work for children worldwide.
Source: UNICEF Australia
