Strengthening health systems – coping with the effects of Ebola

On 10th April 2015, the two ministers ended their four-day trip to West Africa holding talks with the Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. In the course of their visit, Federal Minister of Health, Hermann Gröhe, and the Federal Minister for Economic Co-operation and Development, Gerd Müller assured the Ebola-stricken states of their backing for the reconstruction effort in the wake of the Ebola crisis.

Germany will be supporting Africa's development of its healthcare system, within the framework of a special programme, to the tune of 200 million euros. Liberia alone will be receiving 12 million Euros in immediate support.

The ministers were accompanied by a delegation that included, among others, Ms Dagmar Wöhrl, Chairperson of the German Parliamentary Committee on Economic Co-operation and Development, Mr Helmut Heiderich MP, Ms Bärbel Dieckmann, Chairperson of Welthungerhilfe, Mr Johannes Richert of the German Red Cross, Mr Bernd Pastors from action medeor e.V. and the Commissioner for Ebola of the Federal Government, Ambassador Walter Lindner.

The visit in retrospect:

The delegation's first destination was the Ghanaian capital, Accra. Having been spared by the Ebola epidemic, Ghana serves as a logistic base for supplying the countries most affected: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. In those countries, more than 10,000 persons died of Ebola. Economically, the epidemic set the three states back some five to ten years.

While in Ghana, in addition to the UN depot, the delegation also visited laboratory facilities, and development co-operation projects, among other things, in the area of vocational training and the manufacture of medicinal products. Furthermore, talks with government members and the current Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), State President John Dramani Mahama, were also on the agenda. In the course of his visit to Berlin in January, President Mahama had expressed his support for a six-point plan put forward by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel on the lessons to be learned from the Ebola crisis.

On Thursday and Friday, the delegation visited Liberia. In addition to talks with helpers in the fight against Ebola, the ministers visited a hospital in the capital Monrovia. They also met with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian State President who had been distinguished with the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to ending the civil war.