The Australian Government will increase its efforts to support international organisations to respond to infectious disease outbreaks in developing countries.

Australia will contribute $4 million to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Contingency Fund for Emergencies to enable quick and effective mobilisation of WHO responses to outbreaks. This commitment will support the WHO Contingency Fund’s containment efforts in the recent outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Australia will also contribute $9.5 million to the Cash Window of the World Bank’s Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility, which supports the scaling-up of national and international responses to major outbreaks where initial containment efforts are unsuccessful.

These contributions will be drawn from Australia’s $300 million Indo-Pacific Health Security Initiative over five years, which I announced in October 2017.

We share the international community’s concern over the Ebola outbreak, which poses a serious risk to the DRC and neighbouring countries.

While Ebola is a very serious disease, the risk of an outbreak in Australia remains low. Australia has robust border protection measures and a strong health system to identify and manage infectious disease risks.