Officials in Sierra Leone are continuing to abuse aid money sent there to combat Ebola, according to audit reports and a Quinnipiac University political science professor who just returned home from a trip there.
According to the World Health Organization, nearly 4,000 people died ofEbolain Sierra Leone since the country's first reported case in May 2014. Over a year later, Ebola is largely under control there. The past 21 days have seen six confirmed cases in a country with a total population exceeding six million people.
Fodei Batty is from Sierra Leone, and he just visited. He teaches political science at Quinnipiac University. He said Ebola brought a lot of aid money into Sierra Leone, but what it didn't bring was financial oversight.
"It's shocking. It's absolutely scandalous," Batty said. "There's this joke in terms of senior public officials in Sierra Leone at the moment. Some of them have remarked: 'May Ebola last a little longer, so I finish building my mansion.'"
Earlier this year, a report from Audit Service Sierra Leone said millions of dollars worth of aid money from the U.S. and other countries were improperly spent. The report cited what it called a "complete disregard" for the country's financial reporting laws.
Batty got back from his trip to Sierra Leone last month. He visited an Ebolaresponse center, which was still dealing with reported cases of the disease. But today, he said it's very hard to tell where the disease remains a real threat and where people are scamming the system -- what he calls the "epidemic after the epidemic."
"You don't know what's going on," Batty said. "Whether people are still doing stuff just to keep the buzz and the over-hype of the disease going, so the money keeps flowing."
Because of his visit, Batty is under a 21-day monitoring period. He's free to leave his house in Connecticut and go about his daily routine, but he must check and report his temperature twice a day.
Batty said he plans to visit Sierra Leone next year. In the meantime, he said he hopes there's more global scrutiny about how Sierra Leone spends its aid money.