--- title: Only 40% of Ebola Donations Have Reached Affected Countries description: The latest study shows the disconnect between what the world pledged to give, and what the affected countries actually received canonical: https://time.com/3692844/ebola-missing-donations/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-02-03T23:30:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T04:04:55.954Z article:section: Health og:title: Only 40% of Ebola Donations Have Reached The Affected Countries og:description: The latest study shows the disconnect between what the world pledged to give, and what the affected countries actually received og:url: https://time.com/3692844/ebola-missing-donations/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b6ca68d2b3da601/69877d41f887dcd5c9e89e4f/886223402.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3800 og:image:height: 2138 og:image:alt: 88622340 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Only 40% of Ebola Donations Have Reached The Affected Countries twitter:description: The latest study shows the disconnect between what the world pledged to give, and what the affected countries actually received twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b6ca68d2b3da601/69877d41f887dcd5c9e89e4f/886223402.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Only 40% of Ebola Donations Have Reached the Affected Countries > Sponsored content. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Feb 3, 2015 11:30 PM UTC  Charity jar Charity jarImage Source—Getty Images/Image Source  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Feb 3, 2015 11:30 PM UTC Of all the money pledged by well-intentioned individuals, organizations and nations, only 40% has actually reached the countries hardest hit by the Ebola epidemic in West Africa—Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The new calculation comes from Karen Grepin, an assistant professor of global health policy at New York University, in a [report published in the _BMJ_](http://www.bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.h376). Using data collected by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Grepin looked back and found that the World Health Organization’s requests for aid changed constantly since the Ministry of Health in Guinea first reported the 49 cases and 29 deaths that launched the current Ebola outbreak. From an early ask of $4.8 million in April, the agency, along with the governments of the three affected nations, revised that need to $71 million in August and to $600 million soon afterward to contain the epidemic. By the end of 2014, the UN was requesting $1.5 billion. **MORE:** [The First Ever Large-Scale Ebola Vaccine Trial Begins in Liberia](http://time.com/3691872/first-ebola-vaccine-trial-liberia/) The global community responded, pledging nearly $2.9 billion by December. Only $1.09 billion of this support has actually been paid, however, and Ebola-stricken countries only began receiving some of this aid in October, a full seven months after the first cases were reported. The U.S. has been the largest donor, pledging more than $900 million, of which 95% has been funded, followed by the U.K., with $307 million, and the World Bank at $230 million. (Only half of the World Bank pledge has been funded.) **MORE:** [TIME Person of the Year: The Ebola Fighters](http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-ebola-fighters/) The delay in dispatching resources to West Africa may have contributed to the spread of the virus and further increases in the financial needs of those countries, whose health systems have been strained by the volume of Ebola cases, Grepin argues. “We need a mechanism to enable more rapid disbursement of funds to fight public health threats such as Ebola, such as a dedicated fund that could be rapidly deployed for any emergency,” she writes. “Although quantity of funding is important, so is the quality of the response.” Learning from what worked to support the nations affected by Ebola, and which strategies proved too inefficient, could help to streamline and optimize efforts for the next public health threat. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3692844/ebola-missing-donations/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3692844/ebola-missing-donations/"},"headline":"Only 40% of Ebola Donations Have Reached the Affected Countries","datePublished":"2015-02-03T23:30:50.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T04:04:55.954Z","description":"The latest study shows the gap between what the world pledged to give, and what the affected countries really got","url":"https://time.com/3692844/ebola-missing-donations/","keywords":["Public Health","Donations","Charity","Infectious Disease","World Health Organization","ebola","world bank"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b6ca68d2b3da601/69877d41f887dcd5c9e89e4f/886223402.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b6ca68d2b3da601/69877d41f887dcd5c9e89e4f/886223402.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"88622340","caption":"88622340","creditText":"Image Source—Getty Images/Image Source","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/public-health/","name":"Public Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3692844/ebola-missing-donations/","name":"Only 40% of Ebola Donations Have Reached the Affected Countries"}}]}] ```