The president of Liberia thanked Seattle-area philanthropists at a weekend appearance in Bellevue, crediting their early support during the Ebola crisis with helping to save many lives.
Nobel Peace laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf cited support from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others as crucial in helping Liberia eradicate Ebola. The Allen Foundation committed $100 million, while the Gates Foundation pledged $50 million.
President Johnson Sirleaf spoke with Tom Paulson of the blog Humanosphere, which covers global health and development. She told him she hopes those organizations will continue working with her deputy minister, who headed the incident command structure for Liberia’s Ebola outbreak, to help transform the country’s emergency response into a permanent public health system.
“I hope that he will form some kind of networking with some of them,” Johnson Sirleaf said. “He is now heading our emergency operations center, which we hope can evolve into a center for disease control.”
The president was in Bellevue to speak at a fundraiser for the Center for Infectious Disease Research. The organization focuses on the major killers in developing countries, including HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. Johnson Sirleaf noted that malaria kills far more Liberians than Ebola.
The World Health Organization reports that Ebola infected 10,672 people in Liberia, causing 4,808 deaths. The country was declared free of the disease in September, but cases continue to bubble up in nearby Guinea and Sierra Leone.
