Ebola

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts
Wednesday 4th February 2015

(9 years, 9 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Northover Portrait Baroness Northover
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My noble friend is right that there are models for how this might be taken forward and he is right that there were real risks of a pandemic. The United Kingdom and its NHS workers have actually played a pretty key role in stemming that, so that it did not become a pandemic. Certainly, in terms of the development of vaccines, that is another area that we need to investigate.

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Portrait Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)
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My Lords, we have known about Ebola for 40 years, yet we still have no vaccine and no cure. Does the Minister agree that the cost of bringing that drug forward and taking it through the necessary regulatory process means that pharmaceutical companies prefer to focus on the diseases of the rich than on poor people’s diseases in Sierra Leone?