Ebola: harnessing the potential of the private sector

Ebola: harnessing the potential of the private sector

December 11, 2014, African Law & Business

Covington's Ashwin Kaja authored this piece on the implications of the Ebola crisis on international businesses:

Although headway has been made in curbing the spread of the Ebola virus in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, more than 16,000 people to date have contracted the virus and nearly 7,000 have died in what the World Health Organization (WHO) calls the “largest and most complex Ebola outbreak” since the virus was discovered. 

Beyond the humanitarian toll is the outbreak’s economic cost, which the World Bank has estimated would likely cost at least several billion dollars. These estimates reflect direct costs of increased health care spending as well as myriad indirect costs, such as those attributable to unemployment, food insecurity, and a slowdown of trade and investment activity in the region.