A major issue at the President Council
meeting today on Ebola
was how to communicate
the second phase,
now when the numbers are down to about
10 cases per day in the country.
The discussion was
how to handle zero.
In many public health campaigns,
we say "zero traffic deaths",
but we really don't mean
zero traffic deaths.
We mean that we want to
get them as low as possible.
If we use that in Ebola,
it has to be used in a way
so people really realize
that we have to eliminate human
to human transmission completely.
The first message in Liberia
was, "Ebola is real".
Today, the population of this country
is sadly aware that Ebola is real.
The new message now will be,
"Ebola must go".
I think that's a good message
because it doesn't put a time limit.
Because we need endurance: this may
take months, half a year.
Liberia is not
in control of the future
because the neighboring countries
also have Ebola
and they have
much more than Liberia.
So the whole region
has to be freed from it.
The longer I work here -I'm here
for the seventh week now-
the more I realize
how huge this task is.
This has never been done before.
An African big city
with generalized Ebola epidemics
that hasn't existed before,
no one has done what we have to do
the next few months here.
We have to clear Monrovia
and the Montserrado County completely
from Ebola transmission.
It's a huge task, but
it can be done, it's possible.
We just need to get organized
with all the resources
that are now available.