Month: January 2015

Africa looks to extend new disaster insurance to Ebola-like epidemics

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Health workers carry the body of a suspected Ebola victim for burial at a cemetery in FreetownBy Daniel Flynn DAKAR (Reuters) – African countries want to extend a new catastrophe insurance fund, which made its first payout of $25 million this month, to include protection against epidemics in the wake of the devastating Ebola outbreak. The African Risk Capacity (ARC) agency, a specialised body of the African Union, launched a scheme last year to insure against natural disasters. It is an effort to break Africa's reliance on foreign aid and address the impact of climate change by using innovative financial techniques. The ARC paid $25 million in its first year of operations to Senegal, Mauritania and Niger to mitigate the effects of a severe drought in the arid Sahel region south of the Sahara — well above the $8 million in premiums paid by those countries.

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Second patient hospitalized in California undergoes Ebola testing

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Hours after a suspected Ebola patient in Sacramento, California, was found to be free of the virus, a second person hospitalized in the city was reported by public health officials on Friday to be undergoing testing for the deadly disease. The second patient was admitted to Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento Medical Center on Wednesday and, like the previous case, is considered to be at low risk of having contracted the virus, the hospital said in a statement.
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