I think the UK needs to come up with more money to help with the ebola crisis in West Africa

[bumblingbovine49]

I know this may be controversial but this article shows how much money is being donated by various countries and institutions and I think the UK is not coming out very well of it.
www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/08/john-kerry-other-countries-need-to-do-more-to-stop-ebola/

I know this data was prepared by the US state dept so will be designed to make them look good, but I assume that the "shortfall" figure is reasonably accurate and the scale of that shortfall is pretty huge.

We have had threads where people are saying that it is more complicated than just providing money but this shows that there is a massive shortfall in the required funds to deal with this crisis.

Providing more money would at least be a starting point. I am not sure from this where the "charitable" contributions come into it but I do think we should at least be donating as much as we can afford to the ngos who are helping out.

I know we are in a lot of national debt in the UK but I do think we need to send some more cash from the national coffers if we possibly can.

I know we will have contributed indirectly already via the EU contributions but so will the Netherlands and they have manged to get their own section of the pie chart.

UK has donated an additional £20m (on top of the £100m that was already earmarked for Sierra Leone, if I read the gov.uk page properly, plus sending military assets).

I think this shows the importance of keeping the aid budget.

That graph does puzzle me because as scaevola says, the uk government have pledged £120m ($195m)

However, agree that we can do more.

If people are concerned about being hounded after donating, I donated to MSF in the summer and apart from one thank you, I've not been pestered by them for more - which makes me more inclined to repeat my donation.

?
Would it not be appropriate to show contributions relative to the size or wealth of the contributing country?
obviously the US will have donated more it? has a far larger economy

or am I missing something?

I don't think that graph is accurate anyway.

I don't understand the graph either - thought 125 million seemed like quite a substantial donation, though I think we absolutely should be doing more. It's just so frustrating that help seems to be taking so long to arrive, and the delay means that we are just trying to catch up with growing outbreak all the time.

I donated to MSF over the summer, and just got an acknowledgement with no follow-up. I think they did actually close their specific ebola campaign because they were completely at the limits of what they can do, and were desperate for others to help (obviously not just NGOs), though I guess if you made a general donation it would still go towards their work.

I have recently donated to both Save the Children's and British Red Cross's dedicated ebola campaigns and also just got email acknowledgements. TBH I'd rather feel like I'm doing something and be hounded for additional donations than just sit and watch and worry

I wish there was something practical I can do as well as the donations. I wonder if knitted blankets would be useful or an unwanted burden?

There is something :)

They are looking for volunteers to help map the areas where there is an outbreak using satellite data.

news article

mapping link

I saw part of a news item. Christine Delagarde has spoken at a Wirld Bank meeting today, saying it is exceptionally rare for IMF to approve this, but countries can increase their deficits to provide aid money because that is the right thing to do.

I found a project where mners could maybe contribute some time: thread with info here

Forgot I'd put a link here initially anyway, theres more info on the other thread on how to do it.