The first Ebola cases were confirmed in Guinea in March 2014. Some 27,000 people went on to contract the virus, which spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone; about 11,000 died. With most victims aged 15-45, many households lost at least one breadwinner. On the spot within eight days of the Guinea outbreak, WFP has fed patients, survivors and their families in all three countries.
In August 2014, WFP launched a US$70 million emergency operation to assist 1.3 million people. By December, in line with the broader strategic move to empower vulnerable populations, we partly shifted from food to cash assistance. Crucial to the response was a mass school feeding programme, which continued as the outbreak susbsided in 2015. It is estimated that 97 percent of people who received WFP assistance remained in their places of residence, thus helping contain the spread of the disease.
Weeks into the crisis, WFP had a complete understanding of people's food needs in the affected regions. This was made possible by our Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping (VAM) platform. VAM — and its mobile version, mVAM — collects and crunches data from satellite imagery to food prices to determine the level of food insecurity, establish the type and extent and support needed, and allocate resources accordingly.
As services and systems stopped functioning, including commercial flights to the affected countries, UNHAS provided crucial air transport within the West Africa region, ensuring that medical and aid workers were able to reach Ebola-affected communities. UNHAS designed tailor-made air services to support the needs of the Ebola responders, as coordinated by WHO, MSF and CDC. To do this, UNHAS, UNMEER and UNMIL worked closely to develop joint flight schedules. As of December 2015, UNHAS transported over 29,000 passengers from over 150 organizations, including WHO, IFRC, Save the Children, and the French Red Cross, and conducted over 70 medical evacuations.
UNHRD played a critical role in rapidly dispatching supplies to the Ebola-affected countries. From March 2014, the UNHRD warehouses dispatched items such as protective gear, medical supplies, and equipment at the request of governments, UN agencies and NGOs, to wherever they were needed. In total, UNHRD dispatched more than 2,300 metric tons of items valued at US$29 million such as gloves, health kits, and other medical supplies for partners to the affected countries.
At the height of the Ebola Response, the Cologne staging area was established for a six-month period to provide rapid transport for humanitarian and medical organizations to Ebola-affected countries. Through the Logistics-Cluster managed staging area, we airlifted crucial medical supplies and relief items for UN agencies, NGOs and other actors involved in the response. With private sector support, we organized ten inter-agency chartered flights of relief cargo for 40 aid organizations, saving both time and money for our partners.
The Air Coordination Cell was a joint UNICEF-WFP initiative, hosted by UNICEF’s Supply Division in Copenhagen, Denmark. In collaboration with the Logistics Cluster, the ACC provided information updates on a daily basis, and allowed humanitarian organizations to book cargo transportation services. In total, it supported over 45 organizations to transport emergency supplies to the affected countries.
To fight the outbreak, WFP shared its engineering expertise to build structures it had never built before – from Ebola treatment units to vehicle decontamination centres. In total, WFP’s engineers built over 50 structures across the three Ebola-affected countries, including a humanitarian air terminal in Dakar, Senegal to support the transport of medical and aid workers across the region.
Storage, transport and coordination among humanitarian and medical actors was crucial in the Ebola response. The Logistics Cluster facilitated access to these essential services by setting up a coordination structure across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia by working directly with national health authorities, WHO, MSF and other medical actors. Since September 2014, the Logistics Cluster facilitated the transport of over 30,000 mt of cargo on behalf of over 100 organizations, and the storage of nearly 23,000 mt (168,500 m3) of cargo on behalf of over 75 organizations across the three-affected countries.
Beginning in August 2014, the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) network together with FITTEST, the IT emergency response capacity of WFP teamed up to provide communications services – including remote internet connectivity and radio - to over 1,800 emergency responders at more than 90 humanitarian facilities across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
One of the biggest health emergencies in recent years, the Ebola virus outbreak of 2014 illustrates the suddenness and multi-dimensional nature of today’s humanitarian crises. The World Food Programme (WFP) was a frontline actor from the outset. We delivered food to patients and survivors – but also deployed hi-tech capabilities to assess needs, complement the medical response and support the broader humanitarian community.
The US$205 million plan was our largest Special Operation to date. We created a logistics backbone to halt the spread of the disease, including supply networks to store and despatch medical items, protective gear, and other relief material on behalf of our partners. We also flew first responders into and between the affected regions, and set up emergency communications systems to share vital information and data.