Ebola

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Desmond Swayne)]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) for bringing this issue to the attention of the House this evening. He is right in his analysis that this is a very severe problem. I estimate that by the end of October, we will already have had some 14,000 cases and approximately 5,000 deaths. The current rate of infection 1.7: in other words, for every one patient presenting with the disease, 1.7 people are going to catch it. That will lead to a doubling of cases within four weeks. So we have had some very alarming suggestions. I believe that the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention predicted just short of 1.5 million cases in January.

This is absolutely unprecedented in the history of the disease of Ebola. In the past, Ebola has burnt itself out within a few weeks in isolated settlements. It is therefore essential that we isolate it, and for that we need large numbers of foreign medical teams in order to secure that isolation and treatment of the disease. That is why we are stepping up our efforts, and taking a leadership role in encouraging other countries to do the same, and we will not stop: we will carry on until we have beaten this disease.

On the United Kingdom’s response, we are working in partnership with the Government of Sierra Leone. It is a long partnership, one established when that country came out of conflict. We have sought to encourage it from that conflict, and with economic development; but now, we are in partnership with the Government of Sierra Leone in order to beat this disease.

So what is our response? My hon. and learned Friend said that we have committed £125 million; actually, it is £230 million so far, including the previously announced aid matching of the first £5 million of the appeal launched by the Disasters Emergency Committee. We are deploying some 800 military personnel, together with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Argus and its three Merlin helicopters.

Our strategy can be summed up as: beds, burials and communities. The hospital in Kerry Town opened for business today. Our ambition is that it will treat some 8,800 patients within six months. We are making available 700 beds. We anticipate that within a few weeks, the Kerry Town facility will provide 80 beds for people in the country, with 20 beds reserved for health care workers. It is essential, if we are continue the flow of health care workers, that they be guaranteed British standards of care.

Some 83 burial teams have been established, with our support, and they are making a profound difference in Freetown. Only a few weeks ago, just 30% of victims were being buried within 24 hours, but we have now reached 100% and that experience is going to be rolled out throughout Sierra Leone. A constituent wrote to me to say that he believed that Ebola was being spread by zombies. I had to disabuse him of his belief in zombies, but the irony is that people are most infective when they are dead. One problem is that certain burial traditions involve intimate skin-to-skin contact and the washing of bodies that are highly infectious. We are therefore having to drive social change so that people can understand how they can honour their dead without being infected by them.

We are driving that social change, which leads me to the subject of communities. It is essential to have community care centres where people with symptoms can present and be isolated until we can establish exactly what they have got. For every, say, eight people who present with symptoms, perhaps only one will need to go to an Ebola treatment centre, having been established as having the disease. The others will recover from a bout of malaria, or whatever it was, and go home. We are currently staffing five community centres, and learning the lessons. Within a few weeks we will have 10 of them up and running and, thereafter, it is our ambition to establish 200.

[Jim Shannon]

I made the point earlier that the Territorial Army soldiers and members of the medical corps who are going out to Sierra Leone from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to help to deal with the Ebola outbreak were concerned because they had not been given full training to ensure that they, too, did not catch the disease. Can the Minister reassure us that our TA soldiers are going to be safe?

[Mr Swayne]

We have 250 personnel who are going out on the Argus specifically to provide the training, so I am confident that the question of training has been addressed. They are going to deliver that training themselves, so I certainly believe that this has been done. If I have got that wrong, I will write to the hon. Gentleman and correct it. This operation is driving social change; it is also a huge logistical operation. It is motivating social change and bringing about the necessary logistical changes to drive the isolation of the disease.

[Pauline Latham]

One problem in those communities is that they do not have clean water. We often have water and sanitation programmes in those countries. Can the Minister assure me that he is continuing those programmes to help to keep people clean, because that is one of the key things they need to do?

[Mr Swayne]

My hon. Friend is right; water and sanitation are important, and that will indeed be part of our emphasis.

We are seeking to mobilise social change, but it is also vital—as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham rightly pointed out—that we motivate the rest of the world. The United States is taking responsibility for Liberia, and France is taking responsibility for Guinea and the surrounding francophone zone. We are working closely with the United Nations to help it to address the situation, and we have contributed some £20 million to its trust fund. We are also working with the African Union, not only to secure funds but to ensure a supply of health workers. We are working with other international institutions as well.

On 2 October, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State chaired a conference in London that secured a further £100 million of funding. The Prime Minister then went to the European Council and came back having motivated those there to double the EU contribution to some €1 billion. The High Representative has been dispatched to draw up a programme, return and report at the next Council meeting.

Last week, we signed a memorandum of understanding with New Zealand. It will be supplying some 200 technical and health staff to a base camp in Sierra Leone, and my hon. and learned Friend rightly pointed out that yesterday we heard from the Australians that they will supply 100. My understanding is that it is 100 personnel, but I will write to him to correct that if I have it wrong. It is essential that we proceed to isolate and treat the disease. We are clearly going in the right direction now, but there is much work to be done and a long road to go. It is vital that we continue to secure volunteers and international teams of medical staff to drive this disease down and provide us with the capability to isolate it, because isolation is the key.

My hon. and learned Friend raised a number of concerns about non-governmental organisations on the ground. I seriously do not believe that representatives of, and workers from Save the Children, are living it up in the place at Kerry Town. I understand that they are sharing rooms and that they have negotiated a special price of some £60 a night in order to secure that place proximate to the hospital in which they are working. I am confident that we are taking the right measures to secure the proper expenditure of British taxpayers’ money in order to wipe out this dreadful disease.

Question put and agreed to.