How much countries have donated to the Ebola fight, in one chart
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Every day, it seems there is news of a new country or organization pledging money to the Ebola fight. But it's difficult to know whether these promises vanish into thin air or lead to real action on the ground.
One, a disease- and poverty-focused advocacy group co-founded by Bono, has been tracking the various Ebola responses to hold donor countries accountable. Their findings, as you can see in the chart above, are rather dismal.
A year into the world's worst Ebola epidemic, and only a few donors have disbursed more than half of the funds they promised.
“No donors have attached clear timelines to their contributions for delivery,” according to a statement on the One website. “The time lag between turning pledges into contractual commitments and then converted into fully paid out disbursements is, in many cases, too long.”
Based on data from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN, and the World Bank, the analysis shows that there continue to be sizable gaps between money pledged and money distributed.
But progress is being made, albeit slowly. The last time Vox checked in on One’s tracker in October, only Japan and Australia had disbursed more than a quarter of the funding they committed.
Now, the US, UK, Japan, France, Canada, Netherlands, Australia, and Italy have done so, though some of these and many other countries still haven’t reached the half-way mark.
In total, more than 20,000 people have contracted the Ebola virus this year, and more than 7,800 have died, according to the World Health Organization’s latest estimates. Most cases are concentrated in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.
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By Julia Belluz and Alex Ward
