Global preparedness for future disease outbreaks

This is the Guardian. today How worried should the world be about the latest Ebola outbreak Today, we'll attempt a feeat once thought impossible, overcoming high interest credit card debt. It requires merely one thing, a soFI personal loan. With it, you could save big on interest charges by consolidating into one low fixed rate monthly payment. Defy high interest debt with a soFI personal loan. Visit sofi dot com slash stnt to learn more Loans originated by SFi Bank NA member FDIC. Terms and coonditions Apply NL S six nine six eight nine one Excellency M Sf E excellences. let's begin our work This week, thousands of the world's most distinguished public health experts have all descended on a conference centre in Switzerland. The World Health Assembly happens every year in Geneva, all of the countries who are members of the World Health Organization come together and talk about what it's been doing, what they want it to do for the next year Excellencias They have committees to discuss things like antimicrobial resistance, neglected tropical diseases and mental health It's a big deal, basically like the Glastonbury of public health summits. Except, of course It's a public health summit It can be quite dry. Let us now continue with adoption It can be quite procedural to add this item to the agenda This year feels a little bit different. because Everyone you go up to, everyone you talk to At some point in every session, someone is going to say, Oh, this Ebola outbreak in the DRC looks a bit worrying, doesn't it? I am very worried about the DRC. The cases are well over three hundred. There' been number of deaths. that's a very poorst border.akes. And when they say worrying, you kind of you sit up and listen because These are health professionals. they're used to dealing with outbreaks. They're not really given to hyperbole. Just a few days ago, WHO declared Ebola as a public health emergency of international concern Ebola outbreaks aren't that unusual But this one could be different If There's over a hundred dead. There is no vaccine for this strain And people are getting scared that we could once again see scenes reminiscent of the world's worst Ebola epidemic of a decade ago you start thinking about that time of O crowded treatment centers, you know bodies in the streets. I don't want to be alarmist. The world has got better at dealing with Ebola, but just those numbers really kind of bring those images back to the front of your mind. From the Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in focus Are we heading for another Ebola crisis Ala, you're the Guardian's Gobal health correspondent and you are currently in Genea, Switzerland for the World Health Assembly. This is an enormous summit where delegations from one hundred ninety four member states gather to discuss global health policies. Now we have this Ebola outbreak which I imagine is causing some concern Can you tell us first like how has that disrupted Everyone there I mean it's something that everyone is talking about. It's something that Dr. Ted Rross, the Director General, felt he had to address in his opening remarks. I'm deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic. We will convene the emergency committee today to advise us on temporary recommendations The head of Africa CDC, which is the continent's kind of top public health body, Dr. Jean Caser, he was supposed to be in Geneva this week. He was actually here at the weekend, but he has cancellled all his meetings and he's flown back to Africa so that he can kind of be on the ground dealing with this Ebola outbreak. Currently I'm on panic mode Because people are dying, I don't have medicines, I don't have vaccine. This outbreak now in DRC, it's out of Ituri. It's going to other regions. I think it's a sign of how seriously people are taking this outbreak Can you just remind us, what is Ebola can what its symptoms So Ebona is a disease that can be caused by six different types of ortho Ebola viruses and they cause symptoms that In the first case, they don't seem that different from another cold or a flu, you know, youve got your aches pains, shivers And then they progress and you get what's called the symptoms. So you get vomiting, diarrhea deadly bleeding. Right And that bleeding, I mean, it's a really horrible disease, isn't it? I'm sure we all remember the pictures from the last big outbreak Qite a few years ago now, it is a nasty, nasty disease, isn't it? It is. I mean, Ebola viruses can cause fatality rates of up to eighty, ninety percent. but it is much less transmissible than COVID or flu. I think for the Bundib Bugio variant, which is what we're talking about in the DRC In previous outbreaks, you've seen death rates of between thirty to fifty percent So it's quite scary And how is it spread? How do people catch it It spreads through contacts with bodily fluids. so someone caring for an embola patient might come into contact with their vomit or their blood In previous outbreaks, we've seen that funerals are quite a common placeace for ebolotus spread. And that's because people are interacting with the body,, preparing it for burial And I'm sure most of us remember the last Ebola outbreak, I think, started twenty thirteen. Can you tell us how bad did that get and how did they eventually manage to contain it More than twenty eight thousand people were infected and more than eleven thousand died. It spread across multiple countries This health crisis we face is unparalleled in modern times. What was a linear increase in cases to now almost an exponential increase in cases. And I'm sure you remember this huge international response where you had teams flying in, setting up temporary hospitals. those immages of people in almost they look like space suits covering your whole body to protect the health workers from virus and people are literally dying in the streets. If the outbreak is not stopped now, be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected Two years to get on top of that outbreak And that came at a time when we didn't have drugs or vaccines against Ebola And that was contained through this painstaking process of identifying cases, isolating them finding out who they'd been in contact with then isolate those people at risk and really try and break those chains of transmission This current outbreak of Ebola that we've been hearing about this week When did you first hear about that So this outbreak I first heard about on Friday when an email popped into my inbox from the Africa CDC and it said There's an outbreak of Ebola in the DRC. There's two hundred and forty six suspected cases, there's sixty five. And I was looking at it thinking this must be an ongoing outbreak of Ebola that I've somehow missed because those numbers, they're not what you expect to see when you're first hearing about an outbreak, they're the kind of level of cases, deaths that you might see a good few weeks, maybe months into an outbreak. A few days later We were already at five hundred cases and one hundred and thirty suspected deaths So that's a doubling in a matter of days. Wow, So it's made really quickly. Absolutely. This is the seventeenth recorded Ebola outbreak in DRC. And then on Sunday, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern Today, I have released five hundred thousand US dollars from WHOs contingency fund for emergencies. to immediately support the response Right, so there are already cases in Uganda. and there is one American patient who was working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who has been flown to Germany. Where did all of this start in the DRC? So almost all the cases are in the Ituri region of the DRC, which borders South Sudan, it borders Uganda the kind of first was on april the twenty seventh. and There were some local tests done around that time The tests that were being used, they only pick up the Zaya strain. The local officials doing those tests thought This is an Ebola I see. They did send samples to the National Lab, which is why a few days later we found actually know it is this are strain the Bundi Bujia strain. Right. So a lot of times wasted because they were looking for the wrong strain of ebola and this is a rarer kind that currently has no vaccine. Yeah. So this is a really interesting element of potentially why it took a bit longer than ideal to raiseed the alarm. Could you give us an idea of where this outbreak is occurring What is the health capacity in those areas where these cases are spreading It's a very remote area. So I've been talking to people and they say, it takes us five days to get from in ShSa to this area. It's a conflict affected area. So there are rival militias kind of vying for control in the area. The conflict in the area has displaced thousandousands of people, you know over the last year It's also an area where there's a lot of mining activity. So you get a lot of people moving around They come there for work and then maybe they go home So it's place where Maybe it's quite good conditions for a virus to spread because people might get infected and then they're moving around Right. In terms of this being a place where people are experiencing conflict, they're being displaced I imagine also That might prevent people seeking treatment or making the journey to a local healthcare facility as well if they're concerned about security. Yeah, we've seen actually increasingly over reccent years, healthcare facilities becoming targets in conflicts of all kinds And that can really put people off going to a clinic or a hospital I was speaking to one doctor and he was saying, even if we did have a vaccine for this strain You can't be sending vaccinators in where healthcare professionals being killed, it makes it much harder to deliver that kind of health work Prosper Eri Nngora, you're a journalist based in the easastern DRC in a city called Goma, which is a few hundred kilometers away from where this outbreak is happening And you've covered many Ebola outbreaks in the region. How is it for you as a journalist to report on this disease covering this outbreak happening in our area isn't easy at all. Before being journalists, we are citizens that are also affected by these outbreak So we are also psychologically affected to see our fellow citizens losing their lives due to these outbreaks Overall, we are journalists We are doing our best to cover such events so that the world can be aware of what's happening on the ground and then with leaders decision to save a thousand of lives in our region And prosrosper, the outbreak is currently nowhere near the size of the Ebola crisis between twenty thirteen, twenty sixteen. But tell me how worried are people in the DRC? this disease or these out blad doesn't have any vaccine. that's create Pen me They are dealing with it effect of armed conflicts They are dealing, for example, here in Goma with the closure of Goma International Airport. They are dealing with closure ofven Bs for more than one year and then Ebola comes. And as we speak, Rwanda has closed its borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo. and that really affects thousand of lives because cross border trade was like a lifeline For many families here in Goma, some people here in Goma have already taken measures in order to protect themselves. Some people are washing their hands. Even some people are buying masks to put on their noises, people are trying to do their best to make sure that they protect themselves And above all, they protel the whole community from getting this dangerous disease decimating the region, Etern Congo and Uganda. And obviously contracting Ebola is it's horrific. The vomiting, the bleeding Also, what about the way people are treated by others in their community if they do get infected There are stigma associated We say Ebola. Some people believe that when you catch ebola. it is like a curse And apart from that, when you have ebola, you are isolated. humuman beings are social animals. When you are isolated from people, from your family, from your friends, it can sometimes frustrate you It can be really hard for you to cope with all those misconceptions, to cope with all those doubts surrounding that disease And prosperous part of your reporting, you've been calling people in the affected area And what have people been telling you? are concerned in the whole Dmocratic Republic of Congo, I have spoken with Claude Kasuna, he is a Iuri resident. He has said that he is afraid He fears that the disease because many people there have many beliefs that doesn't have any scientific basis He has a stated that when you say about the need of Social distancing and wearing masks. tend to oppose saying that such measures are bothering them Mbesa, who is a resident of Munwalu, an epicenter of the disease He has shared with me a fact that he knows a family who lost their eight years old daughter And the girls has symptoms such vomiting weaknesses throughout her body. And he said that the doctors are monitoring other famies's member to assess their health. He underlined that the population is now starting to realize the danger they are facing And red is the DRC for an outbreak. like the one we're seeing We are among least developed countries, it means Our health infrastructures are very poor We don't have modern technology that can help us to deal with such outbreaks Apart from that, yes Our country Dmocratic Republic of Congo depends on international aids We have seen when Donald Trump came into power. He has shut down. AIidDs There's no reason for US AID. when you look at the politicians that have been in there sucking the blood out of it When you look at all of the fake deals, it's fake, it's fraudulent, it's probably kickedack And those international aid were helping Congolese government to withstand some outbreaks When there is no aid that can affect negatively all your effort aiming at combating or at ending outbreaks that are happening in their region What are your hopes that this outbreak will actually get under control? So I'm afraid and I'm optimistic Yes, it is a danger But all efforts are being done by international partners and Congolese authorities. I believe that at the end of the time, We will overcome this disease. It will be a painful experience nothing doesn't have an end. If it begins, it will end Cing up. The race to find a vaccine Be you didn't just say, how can I provide these investments? you How do I holistically provide everything? How do I bring in the legal, the accounting, all of this and do it at a price point no one else is doing it? Learn more about how we approach wealth mananagement at creativeplanning d. com slash integrated Today we'll attempt a feat once thought impossible, overcoming high interest credit card debt. It requires merely one thing, a soFI personal loan. With it, you could save big on interest charges by consolidating into one low fixed rate monthly payment. Defy high interest debt with a soFI personersal loan. Visit soOFI dot com slash stuck to learn more. Loans originated by SoFI Bank andA member FDIC Terms and conditions apply. NL S six nine six eight nine one. How's the race going to develop a vaccine for this particular strain Certainly Africa CDC say that they are going to need millions more in funding to get on top of this. So there are vaccines at various stages of development. None have entered human trials yet. it will be certainly weeks, probably months before those Protocols can kind of be developed and experimental treatments even can be deployed on the ground Right, okay. so with that in mind, how big could this outbreak potentially get I mean, that is the big question The DLC has experience dealing with Ebola outbreaks. You know, this is its seventeenth And we can do it without vaccines, without therapeutics through this kind of painstaking process of tracking down cases and who they've been in contact with. It's just a lot harder and it takes a lot longer So I guess after the COVID nineteen pandemic, we would all hope that the world is now better prepared for future pandemics But is that actually the case? So there was a fairly damning report out on Monday from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board And that was a group that was set up actually in the wake of that big Ebola outbreak in twenty sixteen. to look at whether the world was becoming safer from outbreaks of infectious diseases. And it found actually No, not meaningfully. It's quite Gary On some measures thingsings have changed. So we have new drugs, we have new scientific advances you have changes to the way countries cooperate, but at the same time, you have things like the US withdrawing from that kind of global system You have particularly post COVID, this kind of fragmentation, this huge growth in mistrust in misinformation. And so those are kind of counterbalancing those advances and making it seem as if maybe We're not actually in a better place than we were before COVID or before that biggerbola outbreak So that's a pretty worrying picture that you're painting here. and it's not just Ebayler, is it?eople have been really alarmed by the spread of this rodent born Pantaavirus, after we saw that cruise ship kind of plagued by the spread of that disease. It seems like that there might be an impression that there seem to be this kind of spike in disease outbreaks. Is that just a perception M Are these virus events actually becoming more common Part of what's happening now is that we're getting better at spotting these outbreaks. Yes, they are becoming more frequent and that's ' got a number of drivers. You have a changing climate which is perhaps making better conditions for certain pathogens You have people encroaching on what was once wild space and so getting closer to You know, whether it's the bats or the rats that harbor these viruses You have a much more interconnected world. so people can hop on a plane and be on the other side of the planet in a matter of hours, whereas once upon a time spread of the disease would have been that much slower because the flow of people was that much lower