WEBVTT 00:00:00.343 --> 00:00:02.509 When I was asked to - invited, rather, 00:00:02.515 --> 00:00:05.283 to give this talk a couple of months ago 00:00:05.291 --> 00:00:08.742 we discussed a number of titles with the organizers 00:00:08.742 --> 00:00:12.291 and a lot of different items were kicked around and were discussed, 00:00:12.291 --> 00:00:15.697 but nobody suggested this one that you see here today 00:00:15.743 --> 00:00:18.575 and the reason for that was, two months ago 00:00:18.575 --> 00:00:21.845 ebola was escalating exponentially 00:00:21.845 --> 00:00:25.410 and spreading over wider geographic areas than we had ever seen 00:00:25.410 --> 00:00:29.237 and the world was terrified, concerned and alarmed 00:00:29.237 --> 00:00:34.075 by this disease, in a way we've not seen in recent history. 00:00:34.083 --> 00:00:38.172 But today, I can stand here and I can talk to you 00:00:38.172 --> 00:00:40.501 about beating ebola, 00:00:40.501 --> 00:00:43.712 because of people whom you've never heard of, 00:00:43.712 --> 00:00:46.906 people like Peter Clement, 00:00:48.786 --> 00:00:53.956 a Liberian doctor, who's working in Lofa county, 00:00:54.102 --> 00:00:59.619 a place that many of you have never heard of, probably, in Liberia. 00:01:00.736 --> 00:01:03.435 The reason that Lofa county is so important 00:01:03.435 --> 00:01:06.218 is because about five months ago, 00:01:06.218 --> 00:01:09.741 when the epidemic was just starting to escalate, 00:01:09.741 --> 00:01:14.596 Lofa county was right at the center, the epicenter of this epidemic. 00:01:14.596 --> 00:01:16.832 At that time, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) 00:01:16.832 --> 00:01:18.698 and the treatment center there, 00:01:18.698 --> 00:01:21.304 they were seeing dozens of patients every single day, 00:01:21.304 --> 00:01:25.646 and these patients, these communities were becoming more and more terrified 00:01:25.646 --> 00:01:30.042 as time went by, with this disease and what it was doing to their families, 00:01:30.042 --> 00:01:33.729 to the communities, to the children, to the relatives. 00:01:33.729 --> 00:01:38.607 And so Peter Clement was charged with driving that 12 hour long rough road, 00:01:38.607 --> 00:01:42.106 from Monrovia, the capital, up to Lofa county, 00:01:42.106 --> 00:01:47.451 to try and help bring control to the escalating epidemic there. 00:01:47.451 --> 00:01:52.927 And what Peter found when he arrived was a terror that I just mentioned to you. 00:01:52.927 --> 00:01:56.470 So he sat down with the local chiefs, and he listened. 00:01:57.045 --> 00:02:01.065 And what he heard was heartbreaking. 00:02:01.065 --> 00:02:05.094 He heard about the devastation and the desperation 00:02:05.094 --> 00:02:08.017 of people affected by this disease. 00:02:08.017 --> 00:02:10.764 He heard the heartbreaking stories about 00:02:10.764 --> 00:02:13.607 not just the damage that ebola did to people, 00:02:13.607 --> 00:02:16.946 but what it did to families and what it did to communities. 00:02:18.156 --> 00:02:22.119 And he listened to the chiefs, the local chiefs there 00:02:22.119 --> 00:02:23.748 and what they told him - they said 00:02:23.748 --> 00:02:26.528 "When our children are sick, when our children are dying, 00:02:26.528 --> 00:02:29.797 we can't hold them at a time when we want to be closest to them. 00:02:29.797 --> 00:02:34.812 When our relatives die, we can't take care of them as our tradition demands 00:02:34.812 --> 00:02:37.381 we are not allowed to wash the bodies to bury them 00:02:37.381 --> 00:02:40.401 the way our communities and our rituals demand. 00:02:40.401 --> 00:02:43.920 And for this reason, they were deeply disturbed, deeply alarmed 00:02:43.920 --> 00:02:47.630 and the entire epidemic was unraveling in front of them. 00:02:47.630 --> 00:02:50.804 People were turning on the health care workers who had come, 00:02:50.804 --> 00:02:54.281 the heroes who come to try and help save and the community 00:02:54.281 --> 00:02:58.245 to help work with the community, And they were unable to access them. 00:02:58.734 --> 00:03:05.247 And what happened then was Peter explained to the leaders, 00:03:05.247 --> 00:03:07.908 the leaders listened. They turned the tables. 00:03:07.933 --> 00:03:11.764 And Peter explained what ebola was. He explained what the disease was, 00:03:11.764 --> 00:03:14.013 he explained what it did to their communities. 00:03:14.013 --> 00:03:18.865 And he explained that ebola threatened everything that made us human. 00:03:18.865 --> 00:03:23.337 Ebola means you can't hold your children the way you would in this situation. 00:03:23.337 --> 00:03:25.791 You can't bury your dead the way that you would. 00:03:25.791 --> 00:03:30.222 You have to trust these people in the space suits to do that for you. 00:03:30.222 --> 00:03:33.591 And ladies and gentlemen, what happened then was rather extraordinary; 00:03:33.591 --> 00:03:37.218 the community, health workers, Peter, they sat down together 00:03:37.218 --> 00:03:41.717 and they put together a new plan for controlling ebola in that Lofa county. 00:03:41.717 --> 00:03:46.208 And the reason that this is such an important story, ladies and gentlemen, 00:03:46.208 --> 00:03:51.672 is because today, this County, which is right at the center of this epidemic 00:03:51.672 --> 00:03:54.667 you've been watching, you've been seeing on the newspapers, 00:03:54.667 --> 00:03:58.330 you've been seeing on the television screens, 00:03:58.330 --> 00:04:04.116 tody, loafer County is nearly eight weeks without seeing a single case of ebola. 00:04:04.116 --> 00:04:11.203 (Applause) 00:04:11.203 --> 00:04:14.314 Now this doesn't mean that the job is done obviously. 00:04:14.314 --> 00:04:17.636 There still are huge risk that there will be additional cases there. 00:04:17.636 --> 00:04:21.411 But what it does teach us is that ebola can be beaten. 00:04:21.411 --> 00:04:22.710 That's the key thing. 00:04:22.710 --> 00:04:26.313 Even on the scale, even with the rapid kind of growth that we saw 00:04:26.313 --> 00:04:30.999 in this environment here, we now know ebola can be beaten. 00:04:30.999 --> 00:04:35.238 When communities come together with health care workers work together, 00:04:35.238 --> 00:04:37.581 that's when this disease can be stopped. 00:04:37.581 --> 00:04:41.266 But how did ebola end up in Lofa county in the first place? 00:04:41.266 --> 00:04:46.146 Well, for that, we have to go back 12 months, to the start of this epidemic. 00:04:46.146 --> 00:04:50.009 And as many you know, this virus went undetected, 00:04:50.009 --> 00:04:53.530 evaded the detection for 3 or 4 months when it began. 00:04:53.839 --> 00:04:56.439 That's because this is not a disease of West Africa, 00:04:56.439 --> 00:04:59.650 it's a disease of Central Africa, half a continent away. 00:04:59.650 --> 00:05:01.549 People hadn't seen the disease before, 00:05:01.549 --> 00:05:03.916 health workers hadn't seen the disease before -- 00:05:03.916 --> 00:05:06.176 they didn't know what they were dealing with, 00:05:06.176 --> 00:05:08.099 and they make it even more complicated, 00:05:08.099 --> 00:05:12.549 the virus itself was causing a symptom, is a type of a presentation 00:05:12.549 --> 00:05:15.147 that wasn't classical of the disease. 00:05:15.147 --> 00:05:19.391 So people didn't even recognize a disease, people who knew ebola 00:05:19.391 --> 00:05:23.168 For that reason it evaded a detection for some time, 00:05:23.168 --> 00:05:26.328 But contrary to public belief sometimes these days, 00:05:26.355 --> 00:05:32.341 once the virus was detected, there was a rapid surge in up support. 00:05:32.341 --> 00:05:35.641 MSF rep relief set up the ebola treatment center 00:05:35.641 --> 00:05:38.907 as many of you know, in the area the World Health Organization 00:05:38.907 --> 00:05:41.136 and the partners that worked with deplored 00:05:41.136 --> 00:05:43.986 and eventually hundreds of people over the next two months 00:05:43.986 --> 00:05:46.660 to be able to help track the virus. 00:05:46.660 --> 00:05:50.174 The problem is, ladies and gentlemen, is by then, this virus, 00:05:50.174 --> 00:05:53.318 well known now as ebola, had spread too far. 00:05:53.318 --> 00:05:57.218 It had already outstripped what was one of the largest responses 00:05:57.218 --> 00:06:00.588 that had been mounted so far toward ebola outbreak. 00:06:00.588 --> 00:06:03.478 By the middle of the year, not just Guinea 00:06:03.478 --> 00:06:07.329 but now Sierra Leone and Liberia were also infected. 00:06:07.329 --> 00:06:11.632 And the virus was spreading geographically the numbers were increasing 00:06:11.632 --> 00:06:16.943 and at this time, not only were hundreds of people infected 00:06:16.943 --> 00:06:19.833 and dying of the disease, but as importantly, 00:06:19.834 --> 00:06:21.847 the front line responders, 00:06:21.847 --> 00:06:24.688 the people who to try and help the people, 00:06:24.688 --> 00:06:27.834 the health care workers, the other responders 00:06:27.834 --> 00:06:30.950 were also sick and dying by the dozens. 00:06:30.950 --> 00:06:33.927 The presidents of these countries recognized emergencies 00:06:33.927 --> 00:06:37.224 they met right around that time, they agreed on common action 00:06:37.229 --> 00:06:40.986 and they put together an emergency joint operation center in Conakry 00:06:40.986 --> 00:06:45.993 to try and work together to finish this disease and get it stopped, 00:06:45.993 --> 00:06:48.720 to implement the strategies we talked about. 00:06:48.732 --> 00:06:52.792 But what happened then was something we had never seen before with ebola. 00:06:52.843 --> 00:06:56.970 What happened then was the virus, someone sick with the virus, 00:06:56.970 --> 00:06:59.860 boarded an airplane, flew to another country, 00:07:00.022 --> 00:07:04.000 and for the first time, we saw in another distant country 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:06.720 the virus pop up again. 00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:11.184 This time it was in Nigeria in the teemy metropolis of Legos 00:07:11.184 --> 00:07:12.884 21 million people. 00:07:13.174 --> 00:07:15.964 Now the virus was in that environment. 00:07:16.014 --> 00:07:19.784 And as you can anticipate, there was international alarm, 00:07:19.836 --> 00:07:23.466 international concern on a scale that we haven't seen in recent years 00:07:23.475 --> 00:07:25.865 caused by a disease like this. 00:07:25.915 --> 00:07:30.065 The World Health Organization immediately called together an expert panel, 00:07:30.083 --> 00:07:33.393 looked at the situation, declared an international emergency. 00:07:33.481 --> 00:07:39.235 And in doing so, the expectations would be that there be a huge outpouring of 00:07:39.235 --> 00:07:43.665 international assistance to help these countries which were in so much trouble 00:07:43.687 --> 00:07:46.729 and concerns at that time. 00:07:46.729 --> 00:07:48.972 But what we saw was something very different. 00:07:48.972 --> 00:07:53.042 There was some great response. 00:07:53.060 --> 00:07:57.402 A number of countries came to assist, many many NGOs and others as you know, 00:07:57.402 --> 00:08:00.812 but at the same time, the opposite happened in many places. 00:08:00.812 --> 00:08:06.902 Alarm through -- alarm escalated and very soon these countries found themselves 00:08:06.984 --> 00:08:11.194 not receiving the support they needed but increasingly isolated. 00:08:11.257 --> 00:08:15.687 What we saw with commercial airlines started flying into these countries 00:08:16.099 --> 00:08:19.059 and people who hadn't even been exposed to the virus 00:08:19.087 --> 00:08:21.213 were no longer allowed to travel. 00:08:21.213 --> 00:08:24.944 This cause not only problems, obviously, for the countries themselves, 00:08:24.944 --> 00:08:26.714 but also for the response. 00:08:26.995 --> 00:08:29.880 Those organizations that we're trying to bring people in, 00:08:29.880 --> 00:08:32.033 to try and help them respond to the outbreak 00:08:32.033 --> 00:08:34.104 they could not get people on airplanes, 00:08:34.104 --> 00:08:37.355 they couldn't get in to the countries to be able to respond. 00:08:37.355 --> 00:08:39.736 In that situation, ladies and gentleman, 00:08:39.764 --> 00:08:43.384 a virus like ebola takes advantage. 00:08:43.405 --> 00:08:47.726 And what we saw then was something also we hadn't seen before. 00:08:47.744 --> 00:08:50.440 Not only did this virus continue in the places 00:08:50.440 --> 00:08:54.450 where they'd already become infected, but then it started to escalate 00:08:54.499 --> 00:08:56.779 and we saw the case numbers that you see here, 00:08:56.854 --> 00:08:59.804 something we never seen before on such a scale 00:08:59.821 --> 00:09:02.631 and exponential increase ebola cases 00:09:02.663 --> 00:09:06.963 not just in these countries or the areas already infected in these countries 00:09:06.963 --> 00:09:11.043 but also spreading further and deeper into these countries. 00:09:11.088 --> 00:09:13.275 Ladies and gentleman, this was one of the 00:09:13.275 --> 00:09:18.845 most concerning international emergencies in public health we've ever seen. 00:09:18.995 --> 00:09:22.535 And what happened in these countries, and many of you saw, again, 00:09:22.535 --> 00:09:24.955 on the televisions, read about in the newspapers, 00:09:25.257 --> 00:09:30.787 we saw the health system start to collapse under the weight of this epidemic. 00:09:30.879 --> 00:09:35.699 We saw the schools begin to close, markets no longer started, 00:09:35.736 --> 00:09:39.286 no longer functioned the way that they should in these countries. 00:09:39.397 --> 00:09:43.397 We saw the misinformation and the misperceptions started to spread 00:09:43.423 --> 00:09:46.751 even faster through the communities which became even more alarmed 00:09:46.751 --> 00:09:48.091 about the situation. 00:09:48.091 --> 00:09:51.561 They started to recoil from those people that you saw in the space suits, 00:09:51.561 --> 00:09:54.141 as they call them, would come to help them. 00:09:54.153 --> 00:09:57.323 And then the situation deteriorated even further. 00:09:57.371 --> 00:10:00.031 The countries had to declare a state of emergency. 00:10:00.056 --> 00:10:03.116 Large populations need to be quarantined in some areas 00:10:03.116 --> 00:10:08.986 and then riots broke out. It was a very very terrifying situation 00:10:09.034 --> 00:10:12.094 And the world many people began to ask 00:10:12.094 --> 00:10:15.714 can we ever stop ebola when it starts to spread like this 00:10:15.755 --> 00:10:19.755 and they started to ask how well do we really know this virus. 00:10:20.512 --> 00:10:23.472 The reality is we don't know ebola extremely well. 00:10:23.505 --> 00:10:27.555 It's a relatively modern disease in terms of what we know about it 00:10:27.562 --> 00:10:30.862 we've known the disease only for forty years since it first popped up 00:10:30.872 --> 00:10:33.995 in Central Africa, 1976. 00:10:33.995 --> 00:10:37.445 But despite that we do know many things, 00:10:37.479 --> 00:10:40.689 we know that this virus probably survives in a type of a bat, 00:10:40.784 --> 00:10:44.204 we know that it probably enters a human population 00:10:44.209 --> 00:10:47.129 when we come in contact with the wild animal that has been 00:10:47.135 --> 00:10:50.495 infected with the virus and probably sickened by it. 00:10:50.538 --> 00:10:53.518 Then we know that the virus spreads from person to person 00:10:53.534 --> 00:10:55.964 through contaminated body fluids. 00:10:55.988 --> 00:10:58.575 And as you've all seen we know the horrific disease at 00:10:58.575 --> 00:11:02.495 it then causes in humans where we see this disease cause 00:11:02.558 --> 00:11:05.285 severe fevers, diarrhea, vomiting, and then 00:11:05.285 --> 00:11:10.945 unfortunately, in 70% of the cases or probably more, death. 00:11:11.487 --> 00:11:16.797 This is a very dangerous, debilitating, and deadly disease. 00:11:17.116 --> 00:11:21.476 But despite the fact that we've not known this disease for a particularly long time, 00:11:21.476 --> 00:11:25.806 and we don't know everything about it, we do know how to stop this disease. 00:11:25.861 --> 00:11:29.070 This four things that are critical to stopping ebola. 00:11:29.070 --> 00:11:33.940 First and foremost, the communities have got to understand this disease, 00:11:33.991 --> 00:11:37.600 they've got to understand how it spreads and how to stop it. 00:11:37.600 --> 00:11:41.607 And then we've got to be able to have a system that could find every single case 00:11:41.607 --> 00:11:45.527 every contact of those cases and begin to track to transmission chains 00:11:45.527 --> 00:11:47.957 so that you can stop transmission. 00:11:47.957 --> 00:11:51.387 We have to have treatment center specialized ebola treatment centers, 00:11:51.461 --> 00:11:56.471 where the workers can be protected as they try to provide support 00:11:56.495 --> 00:11:58.624 to these add to the people who are infected, 00:11:58.624 --> 00:12:01.213 so that they might survive the disease 00:12:01.213 --> 00:12:04.834 and then for those who do die, we have to ensure 00:12:04.850 --> 00:12:08.930 there is a safe, but at the same time, dignified burial process, 00:12:08.963 --> 00:12:12.299 so that there is no spread at that time as well. 00:12:12.299 --> 00:12:17.929 So we do know how to stop ebola and these strategies work, ladies and gentlemen, 00:12:17.955 --> 00:12:22.085 the virus was stopped in Nigeria by these four strategies 00:12:22.143 --> 00:12:24.600 and the people implementing them obviously, 00:12:24.600 --> 00:12:28.380 it was stopped in Senegal where it had spread, and also in the other countries 00:12:28.380 --> 00:12:32.160 that were affected by this virus, in this outbreak. 00:12:32.160 --> 00:12:36.346 So there's no question that these strategies actually work. 00:12:36.346 --> 00:12:41.529 The big question, ladies and gentlemen, was whether these strategies could work 00:12:41.558 --> 00:12:45.598 on this scale, in this situation, with so many countries affected with 00:12:45.625 --> 00:12:49.051 the kinda exponential growth that you saw. 00:12:49.051 --> 00:12:53.981 That was a big question that we were facing just two for three months ago. 00:12:54.096 --> 00:12:58.096 Today, we know the answer to that question. 00:12:58.120 --> 00:13:01.516 We know that answer because of the extraordinary work 00:13:01.516 --> 00:13:05.545 of incredible group of NGOs and governments, of local leaders, 00:13:05.545 --> 00:13:10.155 of UN agencies and many humanitarian and other organizations 00:13:10.197 --> 00:13:14.457 that came and joined the fight, try and stop ebola in West Africa. 00:13:14.629 --> 00:13:17.669 But what had to be done there was slightly different. 00:13:17.680 --> 00:13:21.010 These countries took those strategies I just showed you; 00:13:21.028 --> 00:13:25.078 the communities and community engagement the case finding, contact tracing, etc. 00:13:25.115 --> 00:13:27.955 and they turn them on their head. 00:13:27.988 --> 00:13:30.778 There was so much disease they approached it differently. 00:13:30.778 --> 00:13:36.208 What they decided to do was they would first try and slow down this epidemic 00:13:36.296 --> 00:13:40.646 by rapidly building as many beds as possible so that they specialized 00:13:40.676 --> 00:13:44.669 treatment centers so that they could control, they could prevent the disease 00:13:44.669 --> 00:13:46.433 from spreading from those were infected. 00:13:46.433 --> 00:13:49.237 They would rapidly build out many many burial teams so that 00:13:49.237 --> 00:13:51.201 they could safely deal with the dead. 00:13:51.201 --> 00:13:54.499 With that, they were trying to slow this outbreakts see if it could 00:13:54.499 --> 00:13:57.925 actually then be controlled using the classic approach 00:13:57.925 --> 00:14:00.341 of case finding in contact tracing. 00:14:00.341 --> 00:14:04.998 And when I went to West Africa about three months ago when I was there, 00:14:04.998 --> 00:14:07.358 what I saw was extraordinary 00:14:07.370 --> 00:14:11.770 I saw presidents opening emergency operation centers themselves against ebola 00:14:11.790 --> 00:14:16.110 so that they could personally coordinate and oversee in champion 00:14:16.153 --> 00:14:19.573 this surge of international support to try and stop this disease. 00:14:19.593 --> 00:14:23.604 We saw military's from within those countries in from far beyond 00:14:23.604 --> 00:14:26.137 coming in to help build ebola treatment centers 00:14:26.137 --> 00:14:29.210 that could be used to isolate those who are sick. 00:14:34.158 --> 00:14:37.343 to help train the community so that they could actually 00:14:29.210 --> 00:14:34.158 We saw the Red Cross movement working with its partner agencies on the ground there 00:14:37.343 --> 00:14:41.683 safely bury their dead in a dignified manner themselves, 00:14:41.882 --> 00:14:46.282 and we saw the UN agencies the World Food Programme build a tremendous 00:14:46.354 --> 00:14:50.329 air bridge that could get responders to every single corner at these countries 00:14:50.329 --> 00:14:53.899 rapidly to be able to implement the strategies that we just talked about. 00:14:54.022 --> 00:14:57.922 What we saw, ladies and gentlemen, which is probably most impressive 00:14:57.965 --> 00:15:02.025 was just incredible work by the government by the leaders in these countries 00:15:02.108 --> 00:15:07.176 with the communities to try insure people understood this disease, 00:15:07.206 --> 00:15:11.786 understood the extraordinary things they would have to do to try and stop ebola. 00:15:11.859 --> 00:15:16.869 And as a result, ladies and gentlemen, we saw something that we did not know 00:15:16.898 --> 00:15:21.138 only two or three months earlier whether or not it would be possible. 00:15:21.175 --> 00:15:25.034 What we saw was what you see now in this graph, 00:15:25.034 --> 00:15:27.333 when we took stock on the first of December. 00:15:27.333 --> 00:15:30.907 what we saw was we could bend that curve, so to speak, 00:15:30.907 --> 00:15:34.373 change this exponential growth and bring some hope back 00:15:34.373 --> 00:15:37.003 to the ability to control this outbreak. 00:15:37.003 --> 00:15:39.013 And for this reason, ladies and gentlemen, 00:15:39.021 --> 00:15:43.451 there's absolutely no question now that we can catch up with this outbreak 00:15:43.475 --> 00:15:46.715 in West Africa, and we can beat ebola. 00:15:47.480 --> 00:15:51.482 The big question though is that many people are asking even when 00:15:51.482 --> 00:15:53.519 they saw this curve, they said, "hang on a minute, that's great 00:15:53.519 --> 00:15:57.457 you can slow it down, but can you actually drive it down to zero?" 00:15:57.457 --> 00:16:01.443 Now we already answered that question at right back the beginning of this talk 00:16:01.443 --> 00:16:07.603 when I spoke about Lofa county in Liberia, 00:16:07.625 --> 00:16:12.063 we told you the story haw Lofa county got to a situation where they have 00:16:12.063 --> 00:16:14.896 not seen ebola for eight weeks. But this similar stories 00:16:14.896 --> 00:16:19.566 from the other countries as well, from GuĂŠckĂŠdou in Guinea, 00:16:19.566 --> 00:16:23.930 the first area where the first case was actually diagnosed. 00:16:23.947 --> 00:16:28.374 We've seen very very few cases in the last couple of months, 00:16:28.374 --> 00:16:33.175 and here in Kenema, in Sierra Leone, another area in the epicenter, 00:16:33.175 --> 00:16:36.885 we have not seen the virus for more than a couple of weeks -- 00:16:36.886 --> 00:16:41.386 way too early to declare victory obviously but evidence, ladies and gentlemen, 00:16:41.429 --> 00:16:46.129 not only can the response catch up to the disease but this disease 00:16:46.133 --> 00:16:50.633 can be driven to zero. The challenge now, of course, is doing this 00:16:50.633 --> 00:16:55.743 on the scale needed right across these three countries, 00:16:55.761 --> 00:17:00.535 and that is a huge challenge. Because when you've been at something 00:17:00.535 --> 00:17:06.545 for this long, on this scale, two other big threats come in to join the virus. 00:17:06.573 --> 00:17:11.843 The first of those is complacency. The risk that as this disease 00:17:11.851 --> 00:17:15.931 curve starts to bend, the media look elsewhere, the world looks elsewhere. 00:17:16.155 --> 00:17:19.565 Complacency always a risk. And the other risk of course is 00:17:19.586 --> 00:17:23.887 when you've been working so hard for so long and slept so few hours 00:17:23.887 --> 00:17:28.937 over the past months, people are tired, people become fatigued and these new risks 00:17:28.947 --> 00:17:34.327 start to creep into the response. Ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you today 00:17:34.359 --> 00:17:38.509 I've just come back from West Africa. The people of this countries, 00:17:38.560 --> 00:17:42.173 the leaders of these countries, they are not complacent. 00:17:42.173 --> 00:17:45.603 They want to drive ebola to zero in their countries. 00:17:45.603 --> 00:17:48.903 And these people, yes they're tired, but they are not fatigued. 00:17:48.913 --> 00:17:51.580 They have an energy, they have a courage, 00:17:51.580 --> 00:17:54.637 they have the strength to get this finished. 00:17:54.637 --> 00:17:58.880 What they need, ladies and gentlemen, at this point, is the unwavering support 00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:03.430 of the international community, to stand with them, to bolster and bring even more 00:18:03.460 --> 00:18:08.477 support at this time, to get the job finished. Because finishing ebola 00:18:08.477 --> 00:18:13.147 right now means turning the tables on this virus, and beginning to hunt it. 00:18:13.151 --> 00:18:17.749 Remember, this virus, this whole crisis, rather, started with one case, 00:18:17.749 --> 00:18:23.779 and is going to finish with one case. But it will only finish if those countries 00:18:23.804 --> 00:18:27.794 have got enough epidemiologist, enough health workers, enough logisticians 00:18:27.806 --> 00:18:31.296 and enough other people working with them to be able to find every one of 00:18:31.296 --> 00:18:35.796 those cases track their contacts and make sure that this disease stops 00:18:35.836 --> 00:18:39.154 once and for all. I can tell you just having come back, 00:18:39.154 --> 00:18:44.201 they are not complacent, they are not fatigued, and they will finish the job, 00:18:44.201 --> 00:18:46.708 if they had the support that they need. 00:18:46.708 --> 00:18:50.776 Ladies and gentleman, you know the story of ebola, we just told you the story 00:18:50.776 --> 00:18:56.460 of ebola, ebola can be beaten. Now we need you to take this story out 00:18:56.460 --> 00:19:00.274 to tell it to the people who will listen and educate them on what it means 00:19:00.274 --> 00:19:04.994 to beat ebola, and more importantly, we need you to advocate with the people 00:19:05.021 --> 00:19:09.127 who can help us bring the resources we need to these countries, 00:19:09.127 --> 00:19:10.847 to beat this disease. 00:19:10.868 --> 00:19:14.611 Ladies and gentleman, there are a lot of people out there who will survive and 00:19:14.611 --> 00:19:19.500 will thrive, in part, because of what you do to help us beat ebola. 00:19:19.500 --> 00:19:21.210 Thank you. 00:19:21.242 --> 00:19:25.362 (Applause)