Ebola Outbreak: DRC

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

That, of course, is the central question. Our colleagues in public health conduct an analysis on a real-time basis and publish every two weeks their view of the risk to the United Kingdom. They publish the risk of vectors of transmission that they are aware of. They look at the fact that eastern DRC is a relatively remote area, with no direct flights to the United Kingdom, and there is a very limited number of people from the diaspora community of eastern DRC in Britain. However, if Ebola continues to spread, that fortnightly update will change. The current negligible risk could move up, which is why we need to watch this very closely. If it were to move to Uganda, two factors would come into play. Uganda has a better public health system, so it should be able to trace contact to contact and contain Ebola more rapidly, but there is the risk of the direct flights to the United Kingdom, so we need to keep the House updated very closely on that. At the moment, I think their assessment is correct. However, should the situation change, our assessment will need to change.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), for their very measured and detailed statements and replies. May I ask the Secretary of State about the situation in Goma? As far as we know, there are no cases in Goma at the moment, but it is a very large population centre. It seems, from the information I have, that it is not well prepared. Should the disease reach Goma, that could have extremely dangerous consequences. Goma is home to large numbers of refugees, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) pointed out.

[Rory Stewart]

In terms of the worst-case scenarios we are looking at, Goma is a very serious situation. Butembo, as I explained to the House, has a population of 1 million. Goma is far larger. It is a considerable urban settlement and a major trading port right across to Rwanda. It would not be possible to vaccinate everybody in Goma. There are simply more millions of people than we have vaccines to insert. It is therefore very, very important that we contain the outbreak by ring-vaccination around the area of Butembo. If it moves to Goma, we will have to move to a totally different stage of response, so we must do all we can to prevent that happening.