An excerpt from a statement by International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde at a news conference after meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington.

Let me preface anything I will say with one presentation, which is the button that I'm wearing on my jacket. You can take photos if you like, that's fine. It says, "Isolate Ebola, Not Countries." That was given yesterday to me by President Conde of Guinea.

I will start with Ebola. Obviously more will be said about Ebola later on at the Development Committee press conference, but I just want to remind you all that the IMF went really very quickly out of its way to put in place a facility for the three countries of 130 million dollars; they were made available very quickly so that the countries could have the benefit of budgetary support in order to face the very, very difficult situation that the they are facing; all three are under IMF programs.

I think we took the opportunity of the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) actually to remind exactly that principle, that the purpose is to eradicate Ebola but not to isolate the countries themselves.