The United States
government has disclosed that the new funding for Nigeria for the
prevention and mitigation of the COVID-19, pandemic has reached the
sum of $21.4 million.
The US government, in a
statement issued on Thursday by its Mission in Abuja, said that the
funding would support critical activities to control the spread of the
disease, such as rapid public-health information campaigns, water and
sanitation and preventing and controlling infections in healthcare
facilities.
It added that as part of
this comprehensive response from the American people, the US Department
of State and United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
have committed nearly $508 million in emergency health, humanitarian and
economic assistance, aside the funding it already provided to
multilateral and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) helping
communities around the world in dealing with the pandemic.
“The United States
government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) and Department of State, announced on April 17 that new funding
for Nigeria for prevention and mitigation of the novel coronavirus
has reached $21.4 million.
“Approximately four fifths
of the assistance – nearly $18 million – will go towards humanitarian
assistance and includes risk communication, water and sanitation
activities, infection prevention and coordination, and humanitarian
assistance for refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and their
host communities.
“The U.S. government is
leading the world’s humanitarian and health response to the coronavirus
pandemic even while we battle the virus at home,” U.S. Ambassador Mary
Beth Leonard said of the assistance.
“Our assistance is rolling out gradually as we reconfigure priorities in response to the evolving situation,” she said.
The United State government noted
that two examples of USAID assistance included support for Nigeria
Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in sending a million SMS messages a
day to Nigerians and going door-to-door in the North-east to prevent
outbreaks in the country’s most vulnerable areas along with a host of
other activities in urgent development.
This assistance, it said,
was in addition to more than $8.1 billion in total assistance for
Nigeria over the past 20 years, including more than $5.2 billion in US health assistance alone.
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