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When I was invited to give this talk 
a couple of months ago,

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we discussed a number 
of titles with the organizers,

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and a lot of different items were 
kicked around and were discussed.

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But nobody suggested this one,

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and the reason for that
was two months ago,

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Ebola was escalating exponentially

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and spreading over wider geographic areas
than we had ever seen,

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and the world was terrified, 
concerned and alarmed

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by this disease, in a way we've not 
seen in recent history.

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But today, I can stand here 
and I can talk to you about beating Ebola

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because of people 
whom you've never heard of,

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people like Peter Clement, a Liberian 
doctor who's working in Lofa County,

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a place that many of you have 
never heard of, probably, in Liberia.

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The reason that Lofa County 
is so important

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is because about five months ago,

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when the epidemic was 
just starting to escalate,

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Lofa County was right at the center, 
the epicenter of this epidemic.

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At that time, MSF
and the treatment center there,

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they were seeing dozens of patients 
every single day,

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and these patients, these communities
were becoming more and more terrified

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as time went by, with this disease 
and what it was doing to their families,

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to their communities, 
to their children, to their relatives.

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And so Peter Clement was charged with 
driving that 12-hour-long rough road

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from Monrovia, the capital,
up to Lofa County,

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to try and help bring control
to the escalating epidemic there.

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And what Peter found when he arrived was
the terror that I just mentioned to you.

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So he sat down with the local chiefs, 
and he listened.

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And what he heard was heartbreaking.

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He heard about the devastation 
and the desperation

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of people affected by this disease.

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He heard the heartbreaking stories

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about not just the damage
that Ebola did to people,

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but what it did to families 
and what it did to communities.

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And he listened to the local chiefs there
and what they told him --

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They said, "When our children are sick, 
when our children are dying,

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we can't hold them at a time when 
we want to be closest to them.

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When our relatives die, we can't take care
of them as our tradition demands.

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We are not allowed to wash 
the bodies to bury them

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the way our communities and 
our rituals demand.

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And for this reason, they were
deeply disturbed, deeply alarmed

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and the entire epidemic 
was unraveling in front of them.

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People were turning on the healthcare 
workers who had come,

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the heroes who had come to try 
and help save the community,

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to help work with the community,
and they were unable to access them.

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And what happened then was 
Peter explained to the leaders.

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The leaders listened. 
They turned the tables.

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And Peter explained what Ebola was.
He explained what the disease was.

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He explained what it did
to their communities.

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And he explained that Ebola threatened 
everything that made us human.

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Ebola means you can't hold your children
the way you would in this situation.

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You can't bury your dead 
the way that you would.

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You have to trust these people 
in these space suits to do that for you.

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And ladies and gentlemen, what 
happened then was rather extraordinary:

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The community and the health workers, 
Peter, they sat down together

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and they put together a new plan 
for controlling Ebola in Lofa County.

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And the reason that this is such 
an important story, ladies and gentlemen,

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is because today, this county, which is 
right at the center of this epidemic

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you've been watching, 
you've been seeing in the newspapers,

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you've been seeing on 
the television screens,

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today Lofa County is nearly eight weeks
without seeing a single case of Ebola.

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(Applause)

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Now, this doesn't mean that 
the job is done, obviously.

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There's still a huge risk
that there will be additional cases there.

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But what it does teach us 
is that Ebola can be beaten.

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That's the key thing.

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Even on this scale,

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even with the rapid kind of growth
that we saw in this environment here,

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we now know Ebola can be beaten.

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When communities come together 
with health care workers, work together,

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that's when this disease can be stopped.

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But how did Ebola end up
in Lofa County in the first place?

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Well, for that, we have to go back 
12 months, to the start of this epidemic.

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And as many of you know, 
this virus went undetected,

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it evaded detection for three 
or four months when it began.

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That's because this is not 
a disease of West Africa,

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it's a disease of Central Africa, 
half a continent away.

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People hadn't seen the disease before;

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health workers hadn't seen 
the disease before.

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They didn't know what 
they were dealing with,

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and to make it 
even more complicated,

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the virus itself was causing a symptom,
a type of a presentation

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that wasn't classical of the disease.

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So people didn't even recognize 
the disease, people who knew Ebola.

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For that reason it evaded detection 
for some time,

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But contrary to public belief 
sometimes these days,

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once the virus was detected, 
there was a rapid surge in of support.

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MSF rapidly set up an Ebola treatment 
center, as many of you know, in the area.

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The World Health Organization
and the partners that it works with

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deployed eventually hundreds of people 
over the next two months

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to be able to help track the virus.

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The problem, ladies and gentlemen,
is by then, this virus,

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well known now as Ebola, 
had spread too far.

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It had already outstripped what was 
one of the largest responses

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that had been mounted so far
to an Ebola outbreak.

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By the middle of the year,
not just Guinea

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but now Sierra Leone and Liberia
were also infected.

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As the virus was spreading geographically,
the numbers were increasing

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and at this time, not only were 
hundreds of people infected

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and dying of the disease,

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but as importantly,
the front line responders,

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the people who had gone to try and help,

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the health care workers, the other 
responders

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were also sick and dying by the dozens.

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The presidents of these countries 
recognized the emergencies.

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They met right around that time, 
they agreed on common action

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and they put together an emergency 
joint operation center in Conakry

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to try and work together to finish this
disease and get it stopped,

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to implement the strategies
we talked about.

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But what happened then was something 
we had never seen before with Ebola.

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What happened then was the virus, 
or someone sick with the virus,

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boarded an airplane, 
flew to another country,

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and for the first time,
we saw in another distant country

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the virus pop up again.

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This time it was in Nigeria,
in the teeming metropolis of Lagos,

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21 million people.

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Now the virus was in that environment.

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And as you can anticipate, 
there was international alarm,

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international concern on a scale that 
we hadn't seen in recent years

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caused by a disease like this.

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The World Health Organization immediately 
called together an expert panel,

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looked at the situation, 
declared an international emergency.

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And in doing so, the expectation would be
that there would be a huge outpouring

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of international assistance
to help these countries

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which were in so much trouble
and concern at that time.

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But what we saw was 
something very different.

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There was some great response.

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A number of countries came to assist --
many, many NGOs and others, as you know,

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but at the same time, the opposite 
happened in many places.

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Alarm escalated, and very soon 
these countries found themselves

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not receiving the support they needed,
but increasingly isolated.

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What we saw was commercial airlines
started flying into these countries

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and people who hadn't even been
exposed to the virus

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were no longer allowed to travel.

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This cause not only problems, obviously, 
for the countries themselves,

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but also for the response.

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Those organizations that were 
trying to bring people in,

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to try and help them
respond to the outbreak,

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they could not get 
people on airplanes,

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they could not get them into the 
countries to be able to respond.

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In that situation,
ladies and gentleman,

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a virus like Ebola takes advantage.

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And what we saw then was something 
also we hadn't seen before.

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Not only did this virus 
continue in the places

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where they'd already become infected,
but then it started to escalate

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and we saw the case numbers
that you see here,

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something we'd never seen before
on such a scale,

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an exponential increase of Ebola cases

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not just in these countries or the areas 
already infected in these countries

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but also spreading further and 
deeper into these countries.

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Ladies and gentleman,
this was one of the most concerning

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international emergencies in public health
we've ever seen.

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And what happened in these countries then,

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many of you saw, again, on the television,
read about in the newspapers,

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we saw the health system start to collapse
under the weight of this epidemic.

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We saw the schools begin to close, 
markets no longer started,

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no longer functioned the way 
that they should in these countries.

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We saw that misinformation and 
misperceptions started to spread

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even faster through the communities,
which became even more alarmed

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about the situation.

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They started to recoil from those people 
that you saw in those space suits,

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as they call them, 
who had come to help them.

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And then the situation
deteriorated even further.

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The countries had to declare
a state of emergency.

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Large populations needed to be quarantined
in some areas, and then riots broke out.

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It was a very, very terrifying situation.

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Around the world,
many people began to ask,

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can we ever stop Ebola 
when it starts to spread like this?

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And they started to ask, how well 
do we really know this virus?

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The reality is we don't know 
Ebola extremely well.

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It's a relatively modern disease
in terms of what we know about it.

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We've known the disease only for 40 years,

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since it first popped up
in Central Africa in 1976.

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But despite that, we do know many things:

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We know that this virus
probably survives in a type of a bat.

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We know that it probably enters 
a human population

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when we come in contact with a wild animal

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that has been infected with the virus 
and probably sickened by it.

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Then we know that the virus
spreads from person to person

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through contaminated body fluids.

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And as you've all seen,

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we know the horrific disease
that it then causes in humans,

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where we see this disease cause
severe fevers, diarrhea, vomiting,

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and then unfortunately, in 70 percent
of the cases or often more, death.

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This is a very dangerous,
debilitating, and deadly disease.

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But despite the fact that we've not known
this disease for a particularly long time,

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and we don't know everything about it,
we do know how to stop this disease.

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There are four things
that are critical to stopping Ebola.

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First and foremost, the communities 
have got to understand this disease,

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they've got to understand 
how it spreads and how to stop it.

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And then we've got to be able to have 
systems that can find every single case,

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every contact of those cases,

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and begin to track the transmission chains
so that you can stop transmission.

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We have to have treatment centers,
specialized Ebola treatment centers,

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where the workers can be protected

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as they try to provide support
to the people who are infected,

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so that they might survive the disease.

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And then for those who do die,

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we have to ensure there is a safe, but at
the same time dignified, burial process,

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so that there is no spread 
at that time as well.

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So we do know how to stop Ebola, and these
strategies work, ladies and gentlemen.

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The virus was stopped in Nigeria 
by these four strategies

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and the people implementing 
them, obviously.

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It was stopped in Senegal, where it had
spread, and also in the other countries

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that were affected by this virus, 
in this outbreak.

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So there's no question that 
these strategies actually work.

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The big question, ladies and gentlemen,
was whether these strategies could work

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on this scale, in this situation,
with so many countries affected

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with the kind of exponential 
growth that you saw.

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That was the big question that we were 
facing just two or three months ago.

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Today we know the answer to that question.

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And we know that answer 
because of the extraordinary work

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of an incredible group of NGOs,
of governments, of local leaders,

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of U.N. agencies and many humanitarian 
and other organizations

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that came and joined the fight
to try and stop Ebola in West Africa.

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But what had to be done there 
was slightly different.

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These countries took those strategies 
I just showed you;

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the community engagement,
the case finding, contact tracing, etc.,

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and they turned them on their head.

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There was so much disease,
they approached it differently.

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What they decided to do was they would 
first try and slow down this epidemic

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by rapidly building as many beds as
possible in specialized treatment centers

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so that they could prevent the disease
from spreading from those were infected.

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They would rapidly build out
many, many burial teams

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so that they could safely
deal with the dead,

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and with that, they would try 
and slow this outbreak

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to see if it could actually then 
be controlled using the classic approach

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of case finding and contact tracing.

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And when I went to West Africa
about three months ago,

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when I was there
what I saw was extraordinary.

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I saw presidents opening emergency
operation centers themselves against Ebola

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so that they could personally coordinate 
and oversee and champion

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this surge of international support 
to try and stop this disease.

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We saw militaries from within 
those countries and from far beyond

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coming in to help build 
Ebola treatment centers

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that could be used to isolate 
those who were sick.

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to help train the communities so that
they could actually safely bury their dead

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We saw the Red Cross movement working with
its partner agencies on the ground there

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in a dignified manner themselves.

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And we saw the U.N. agencies, 
the World Food Program,

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build a tremendous air bridge

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that could get responders to every single
corner of these countries rapidly

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to be able to implement the strategies
that we just talked about.

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What we saw, ladies and gentlemen, 
which was probably most impressive,

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was this incredible work
by the governments,

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by the leaders in these countries,
with the communities,

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to try to ensure people 
understood this disease,

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understood the extraordinary things they 
would have to do to try and stop Ebola.

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And as a result, ladies and gentlemen,

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we saw something that we did not know
only two or three months earlier,

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whether or not it would be possible.

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What we saw was 
what you see now in this graph,

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when we took stock on December 1.

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What we saw was we could 
bend that curve, so to speak,

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change this exponential growth,

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and bring some hope back
to the ability to control this outbreak.

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And for this reason, ladies and gentlemen,
there's absolutely no question now

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that we can catch up with this outbreak 
in West Africa and we can beat Ebola.

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The big question, though, 
that many people are asking,

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even when they saw this curve, they said,

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"Well, hang on a minute --
that's great you can slow it down,

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but can you actually
drive it down to zero?"

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We already answered that question 
back at the beginning of this talk,

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when I spoke about Lofa County in Liberia.

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We told you the story
how Lofa County got to a situation

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where they have not seen
Ebola for eight weeks.

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But there are similar stories from 
the other countries as well.

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From Gueckedou in Guinea,

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the first area where the first case was
actually diagnosed.

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We've seen very, very few cases
in the last couple of months,

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and here in Kenema, in Sierra Leone, 
another area in the epicenter,

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we have not seen the virus
for more than a couple of weeks --

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way too early to declare 
victory, obviously,

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but evidence, ladies and gentlemen,

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not only can the response 
catch up to the disease,

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but this disease can be driven to zero.

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The challenge now, of course, 
is doing this on the scale needed

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right across these three countries,
and that is a huge challenge.

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Because when you've been at something
for this long, on this scale,

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two other big threats 
come in to join the virus.

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The first of those is complacency,

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the risk that as this 
disease curve starts to bend,

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the media look elsewhere, 
the world looks elsewhere.

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Complacency always a risk.

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And the other risk, of course, is when
you've been working so hard for so long,

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and slept so few hours 
over the past months,

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people are tired, people become fatigued,

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and these new risks 
start to creep into the response.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you today
I've just come back from West Africa.

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The people of these countries,
the leaders of these countries,

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they are not complacent.

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They want to drive Ebola to zero 
in their countries.

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And these people, yes, they're tired, 
but they are not fatigued.

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They have an energy, they have a courage,

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they have the strength 
to get this finished.

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What they need, ladies
and gentlemen, at this point,

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is the unwavering support of the 
international community,

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to stand with them,

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to bolster and bring even more support 
at this time, to get the job finished.

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Because finishing Ebola right now 
means turning the tables on this virus,

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and beginning to hunt it.

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Remember, this virus, this whole crisis, 
rather, started with one case,

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and is going to finish with one case. 
But it will only finish if those countries

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have got enough epidemiologists, 
enough health workers, enough logisticians

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00:18:14,207 --> 00:18:17,594
and enough other people working with them
to be able to find every one of

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00:18:17,594 --> 00:18:22,636
those cases track their contacts and make
sure that this disease stops

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once and for all.

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Ladies and gentleman, Ebola can be beaten.

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Now we need you to take this story out
to tell it to the people who will listen

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00:18:32,245 --> 00:18:35,457
and educate them on what it means
to beat Ebola,

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00:18:35,457 --> 00:18:39,189
and more importantly,
we need you to advocate with the people

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who can help us bring the resources we
need to these countries,

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00:18:42,743 --> 00:18:44,517
to beat this disease.

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00:18:44,517 --> 00:18:48,699
There are a lot of people out there 
who will survive and will thrive,

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00:18:48,699 --> 00:18:52,101
in part, because of 
what you do to help us beat Ebola.

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00:18:52,101 --> 00:18:53,587
Thank you.

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00:18:53,587 --> 00:18:57,474
(Applause)