Stop Ebola in Big City...Never Done Before — Factpod #12

I am on my way from the meeting with the Liberian President's Council. Zero means zero when it comes to Ebola. Hunting the virus in a big city is something new. The daily number of urban cases remain stable. The international support must continue until the number reaches zero; or else the virus will continue to worsening poverty and threaten the rest of the world.

(Recorded on Dec. 5 2014, in Monrovia)

(HELP TRANSLATE SUBTITLES: http://www.amara.org/en/videos/kfSAKYCCvWgP/info/ )

WATCH OFFLINE ON ITUNES: http://goo.gl/nR6wtN

FOLLOW GAPMINDER ON FACEBOOK
https://www.facebook.com/gapminder.org

FOLLOW HANS ON TWITTER
https://twitter.com/hansrosling

PRODUCER: Mattias Högberg

LICENSE
This film is freely available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Which means; Please copy & redistribute this film in any medium or format, as lon as you include: "A free video from www.gapminder.org" Here's the video file: http://goo.gl/fprRAA
( Full license text http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

GAPMINDER HOMEPAGE http://www.gapminder.org

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.