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I am professor Hans Rosling

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I'm am participating in the fight against Ebola

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here in Liberia.

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In this country the number of new cases per day has come down

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from almost 100 in the end of september

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to now in the beginning in December

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around 10 per day.

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But that is still very dangerous!

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Because the only safe and stable level for Ebola is zero cases per day.

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So we say Ebola must go all the way down to zero.

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We must stop transmission among humans.

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But that is difficult now at the low level

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because Ebola is hiding in between the other infectious diseases

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So we have to be like detectives and hunt the virus

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and we do that using a method called "contact tracing".

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I will show you how it works.

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Imagine that this is a patient that is very sick with Ebola.

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It's a contagious disease and everyone that has been in contact with this patient may be infected.

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So what we need to do are two things:

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we need to take the patients to an Ebola Treatment Center and isolate them,

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and then we have to list all the contacts.

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We have to make a list with everyone that was in contact

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with this patient during the days that he/she was sick.

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Then we start what we call the 'contact tracing'.

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In the next 21 days

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we follow all these persons

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and we have to follow them everyday, check the temperature and ask them how they feel

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and if one of them is infected,

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let's say that this one is infected

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and this one is infected

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we don't know, there is no test we can use.

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So we just have to follow them.

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Now those who are not infected, we follow them for 21 days and we find nothing

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we follow this one, we find nothing

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same here

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same here

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But this one that has the virus in the body

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after 10 or 15 days, they get fever, headache, diarrhea

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and then very fast we isolate them.

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So when they develop full blown Ebola here

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they are very contagious, they are already in the Treatment Center

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and they are isolated.

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Now this one here...

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May not have confidence in our system

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they are scared and they decide...

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"no, I get a little fever today, hope it's malaria"

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and they move away somewhere else

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they avoid our contact tracers.

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That's very dangerous!

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Because then they would get Ebola outside our control

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and they may infect other persons.

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And we may also have missed one person down here

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Let's say this is the brother to the case

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and he took a bicycle and went to relatives' to live there.

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If he was infected, we won't know it.

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He will develop Ebola here and infect others.

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So we need a perfect contact tracing system,

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and perfect means that everyone has to be listed.

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So that when they develop the disease

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we can isolate them immediately.

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And those who are scared and don't trust that it's the best to wait for the contact tracer

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we have to convince them and have to be very kind

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so that they would like to be included in our system

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and we can isolate them like that.

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Now the challenge today in Liberia is that

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we have six thousand contacts we are following.

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and they live throughout the country

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most of them here in Monrovia.

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And it's far from a perfect system.

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We have a leakage of patients who are not in the system

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like this one

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and those who we loose during the control.

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But they're getting better and better.

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And we need more resources

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today we don't need more Ebola Treatment Units

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we need more international support for

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this contact tracing.

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And we need people who come and stay for several months

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then we can find all these contacts

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and we can follow them perfectly

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So somewhere in the next year

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when we have made this better and better

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then we may end Ebola transmission completely.

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And then it also has to be done in the neighbouring countries.

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That is possible, but it requires lots of resources

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and lots of endurance

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that we don't give up

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because we have only one objective:

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Ebola must go! Go all the way down to zero.