Ebola aid dogged by coordination lags

CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) – Eight months into West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, officials and medical aid providers say that aid efforts in Guinea still suffer from poor coordination, hampering deployments of international support to help quell the virus.

President Francois Hollande of France on Friday is to become the first non-African head of state to visit Guinea since the crisis began. Hollande will take stock of the response, cheer on heavily-burdened aid providers and help demystify fears about a highly stigmatizing virus.

Aid actors hope that his visit also inspires increased coordination in the Ebola fight.

In a contagion that has killed nearly 5 700 people across the region, Liberia has tallied the most deaths and Sierra Leone faces the fastest rate of expansion. That has made Guinea’s outbreak the least urgent by comparison.