Sports authorities of the South African Republic followed the steps of Morocco and also decided against hosting next year\u2019s Africa Cup of Nations biennial football championship, citing concerns over the outbreak of deadly Ebola virus in West Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe possibility of holding the Africa Cup of Nations is excluded,\u201d South African Sports Minister Fikile April Mbalula said.<\/p>\n
South Africa already hosted the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013 in place of Libya, which was torn by the war at that time. \u201cOur budget is incapable of holding the championship in 2015,\u201d Mbalula said. \u201cThis is totally impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mbalula also said that on top of everything, his country was \u201cfacing the task of fighting Ebola.\u201d \u201cWe are not immune to it,\u201d the South African sports minister added.<\/p>\n
Morocco earlier claimed that it made the decision to cancel hosting the 16-nation football tournament, scheduled to run between January 17 and February 8 next year, as it wanted to avoid holding an event involving countries where Ebola cases were registered, as well as to prevent the expansion of the deadly virus.<\/p>\n
Issa Hayatou, the president of the African football\u2019s governing body CAF, arrived in the South Africa Republic last Thursday in order to find a solution to the emerged problem concerning the hosting country.
\nThe CAF earlier stated that it had no plans of postponing or changing the championship\u2019s date of January 17-February 8.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported last week that the Ebola epidemic was spreading geographically and the death toll exceeded the figure of 4,500, while the number of probable and suspected cases exceeded neared 9,000.<\/p>\n
Source: ItarTass<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sports authorities of the South African Republic followed the steps of Morocco and also decided against hosting next year\u2019s Africa Cup of Nations biennial football championship, citing concerns over the outbreak of deadly Ebola virus in West Africa. \u201cThe possibility of holding the Africa Cup of Nations is excluded,\u201d South African Sports Minister Fikile April … Continue reading “Ebola: South Africa rejects offer to host 2015 Africa Cup of Nations”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[10338,9128,654,4137,9374,476,9127],"class_list":["post-16501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-2015-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-ebola","tag-football","tag-morocco","tag-pandemic","tag-soccer","tag-who"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16501"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16504,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16501\/revisions\/16504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}