MELBOURNE 

Australia will donate 18 million Australian dollars ($16 million) in response to a United Nations appeal for $50 million to fight Ebola in West Africa over the next month.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement Thursday, “Australia shares the international community’s deep concern over the Ebola outbreak.”

The statement explained that the country had decided to more than double its donation of 8 million Australian dollars promised last month.

"The government has assessed that, at this stage, financial contributions are the best and most efficient way Australia can make a rapid contribution to the global response and support front line health services in the affected countries," it added.

The opposition Australian Labor Party and Doctors Without Borders, an international medical humanitarian organization, had called on the government to send a medical team to West Africa.

Bishop, however, told parliament Wednesday that Australia did not have a plane suitable for evacuating an Ebola patient, adding that the 30-hour flight would exceed the timeframe for effective medical treatment.

In recent months, Ebola – a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure – has claimed more than 2,400 lives in West Africa, according to the World Health Organization.

There are currently around 8,000 cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with the number of cases rising exponentially as the disease spreads far faster than responses to it.

The tropical fever, which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals.

It also reportedly spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the disease.

www.aa.com.tr/en