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To Get More Doctors to Africa, Paul Allen Pledges to Fly Sick Ones Home
By Justin Bachman October 24, 2014
To contain the spread of the Ebola virus, organizations working in West Africa need more medical professionals to join that effort. Yet, if those doctors and nurses get sick, many of them want to be flown back home for medical treatment, but medical evacuation isn’t easy or cheap—flights can cost $250,000 or more.
To tackle that problem, billionaire Paul Allen is funding the development and deployment of new containment units for medical evacuation use, “to get you back to your home country safely and quickly if you get infected,” he said on Thursday in a news release. The effort is aimed at persuading more doctors to help treat the thousands of people who have contracted the disease in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
Allen’s foundation has also set up an Ebola Medevac Fund to help cover the costs of an evacuation that a charitable organization’s insurance carrier does not. Most insurers don’t pay the entire $200,000 to $250,000 cost of a medical evacuation flight, says Dune Ives, senior director of Allen’s Vulcan Philanthropies in Seattle.
“What I really hope is that this gets medical care professionals more interested in going to West Africa,” Ives said on Thursday.
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To Get More Doctors to Africa, Paul Allen Pledges to Fly Sick Ones Home
By Justin Bachman October 24, 2014
To contain the spread of the Ebola virus, organizations working in West Africa need more medical professionals to join that effort. Yet, if those doctors and nurses get sick, many of them want to be flown back home for medical treatment, but medical evacuation isn’t easy or cheap—flights can cost $250,000 or more.
To tackle that problem, billionaire Paul Allen is funding the development and deployment of new containment units for medical evacuation use, “to get you back to your home country safely and quickly if you get infected,” he said on Thursday in a news release. The effort is aimed at persuading more doctors to help treat the thousands of people who have contracted the disease in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
Allen’s foundation has also set up an Ebola Medevac Fund to help cover the costs of an evacuation that a charitable organization’s insurance carrier does not. Most insurers don’t pay the entire $200,000 to $250,000 cost of a medical evacuation flight, says Dune Ives, senior director of Allen’s Vulcan Philanthropies in Seattle.
“What I really hope is that this gets medical care professionals more interested in going to West Africa,” Ives said on Thursday.
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