The MFAIC’s Directorate General for Development Cooperation today signed a convention with Rome’s Spallanzani Institute for Infectious Diseases on an emergency intervention in Sierra Leone, valued at EUR 250,000, to help fight the spread of the Ebola virus.
These Development Cooperation funds will allow the Spallanzani Institute to supply technical assistance to the Sierra Leone health ministry and technical support to the special isolation units and interventions of Italian NGOs. Planned are local health personnel training activities and actions aimed at broadening and improving epidemiological and laboratory services. Other interventions will include preparations for the eventual evacuation of infected medial staff.
The Italian Cooperation has already financed a team of four Spallanzani biologists, who will be leaving in the coming days to operate in the new Emergency treatment centre at Goderich, near Freetown. Thanks to the support of the MFAIC, an infectious diseases specialist from the same institute has already been actively working in that country for one month.
This intervention falls within the framework of the Ebola emergency response, for which the Italian Cooperation has thus far disbursed EUO 7.7 million to be used for Italian NGO interventions and in support of the UN agencies and the International Red Cross. Within that same framework, a call for tenders is imminent, involving EUR 3 million in support of Italian NGO activities in Sierra Leone.
