Baroness Hayman
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Ebola
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests declared in the register. In particular, I am a trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee, which currently has an Ebola appeal to which the British public has responded to the tune of over £13 million within a week. Also, my husband chairs Restless Development, which is supported by DfID in its work in sensitisation and education in Sierra Leone.
I have two points. The first, which comes from the 11 DEC agencies working in the field, is about the breadth of the needs in these countries. Of course treatment and quarantine centres are essential, but if we are to stop the spread by stopping transmission we need to facilitate safe burial, education, water and sanitation kits and food for people who are in quarantine and who will otherwise leave it to get their own food. The range of humanitarian needs is enormous and will continue to be so, because of those orphaned children, because of those children who have not been educated since April and have no prospect of schooling, because of the women who are dying in childbirth and who will be leaving more orphans, because of the people with malaria who are not getting treatment and because of the vaccination programmes that are not taking place. So the scale and range of needs is going to be really long term.
The second point is one to which the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, referred. The reason why we do not have a vaccine for Ebola is not because it is a uniquely complex vaccine to develop. The reason why we do not have a vaccine for Ebola is the same as the reason why we do not have treatments and vaccines for other neglected tropical diseases: they are diseases of the poor, and we have a complete market failure in meeting them. We need to put more resources into developing vaccines and treatments, not only because of the humanitarian imperative but because we live in a global world and it is actually our best protection, as well as a humanitarian imperative, to use our expertise and resources to treat these diseases.