Ebola

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving me a copy of her statement in advance, and for advance warning of the statement. I join her in paying tribute to the military health care worker who has tested positive for Ebola. We wish her a speedy and full recovery. Our thoughts are with her and her family and friends. I am sure that the good wishes of the whole House are with her as she returns home to Britain.

The Secretary of State mentioned four other military health care workers who are being assessed. Are they also being flown home to Britain and, if so, in which hospitals will they be assessed? We also pay tribute to the dedication and bravery of the British troops, health workers, charity workers and Department for International Development personnel who have travelled to west Africa to tackle Ebola. They have selflessly put themselves on the front line against this disease. We thank them for their work and salute their courage.

Labour continues to support the Government’s efforts to tackle Ebola and get to zero cases as soon as possible. We agree with the Public Accounts Committee that the Department should take a lead role in global efforts to reach that target. The Ebola outbreak has been devastating for the people of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. There have been more than 24,000 reported cases, and nearly 10,000 deaths. More than 20,000 children are now orphans; they are vulnerable, traumatised and often stigmatised. We welcome what the Secretary of State has said about tackling the stigma of Ebola and services for Ebola orphans. Will the Government ensure that their Ebola response prioritises long-lasting psycho-social and child protection services and the education sector in Sierra Leone?

Ebola has revealed the problems that are created when countries do not have sustainable and resilient health systems. It has shown the limitations of the global community’s approach to health care in developing countries. It has triggered a huge debate on how we should reform the World Health Organisation so that it meets disease challenges better.

Save the Children’s report last week found that 28 countries had worse health coverage than Liberia had at the start of the Ebola outbreak. The world today is globalised; disease outbreaks are everyone’s concern, and preventing them is in everyone’s interests. Can the Secretary of State tell the House how much of the £427 million that the UK Government have committed to fighting Ebola has been disbursed? The previous figure that she mentioned was £325 million. What will the extra £100 million be spent on?

The Secretary of State mentioned a contract with civilian helicopter providers. How much will that cost each month, and for how long will the contract continue? What steps has she taken to persuade other countries to fill the urgent $400 million funding gap for immediate response, and the $900 million gap identified by the United Nations for activities over the next six months? What conversations has she had with her ministerial colleagues about restoring direct flights from the United Kingdom to Sierra Leone, and when will they begin operating again?

Our NHS has shown that the best way to protect against disease is to build a resilient, Government-controlled, Government-funded health service, so how much bilateral funding will the UK give to support the Sierra Leonean and Liberian health sectors next year? How will the Secretary of State and her Department lead reform of the global health system to move organisations away from concentrating on specific diseases and vaccines to a much broader focus on supporting public health systems?

The global community must never again find itself with another Ebola outbreak, no vaccine to prevent spread, and no treatment to preserve life. At the last DFID questions, I asked the Secretary of State if she agreed that we needed urgently to roll out the Ebola vaccine trials from Liberia to Sierra Leone and Guinea to discover which vaccines work. Have those trials started, and if so, how many people are enrolled in them? What conversations has she had with the World Health Organisation about treatment trials?

There is consensus that the global community failed to respond adequately to this Ebola outbreak. As the Secretary of State rightly said, we need to learn the lessons and ensure that we are better prepared. Lasting health care systems are about more than the delivery of commodities such as vaccines and bed nets, vital though those things are. The WHO, the World Bank and non-governmental organisations in countries such as France and Japan are all clear that universal health coverage is the right answer. Does she agree that that is the way forward?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady asked, understandably, about the four other health care workers. They are now in the process of being flown home, purely on a precautionary basis, and will be dealt with at the Royal Free hospital and the Royal Victoria infirmary in Newcastle.

I had a chance to meet some of the orphans from this crisis when I was in Sierra Leone just before Christmas. They were of all ages, of course. Some of our work is to help UNICEF to provide the psycho-social support that they need and to keep the orphanages going. We are also helping to provide dedicated centres where children can be looked after safely if their parents go to community care centres to be tested because they are concerned that they have Ebola; if the parents end up being taken into care, they cannot look after their children.

There are huge child protection issues. I can reassure the hon. Lady that we are mindful of them, and mindful of the need to work not just with the Government of Sierra Leone but with civil society and the NGO sector to make sure that they are properly addressed.

The hon. Lady asks about the extent of our commitment. The £427 million that I have talked about is essentially the money that we are spending on providing ongoing support, including what we have already done, which has now cost more than £200 million. Over the coming months, we need to keep supporting the beds and the safe burials and all the very practical work that we are doing—social mobilisation, talking to communities—and also put in place a budget, which is about half the increase, for the initial planning on early recovery. We are steadily shifting our strategy to ensure that we have the capacity on the ground still to cope and deal with Ebola and get to zero. That is the principal objective that we have to meet, while transitioning to look at how we can safely open schools and hospitals and deal with some of the issues that the hon. Lady talks about in relation to communities.

The helicopter support has been absolutely vital. The road network is part of the development progress, but there is no doubt that fantastic work has been done by the Merlin helicopters. I had a chance during my trips to Sierra Leone to get to know some of the pilots—I was there regularly enough—and they have been working round the clock. I want personally to say a massive thank you to them. They were incredibly impressive and have really put in the flying hours over the past six months. The civilian helicopter provision will ensure that we can continue to get around Sierra Leone rapidly and that the district-level response is working effectively, which is why we have kept it in place.

On the important point about ensuring that, frankly, we get the international community to step up to the plate, particularly as recovery takes place, we are indeed investing a lot of time and effort in lobbying. The Brussels conference, which happened a couple of weeks ago, was absolutely key in really making sure that we got international focus on the need to get to zero, avoiding complacency and starting to present the forward look at what those recovery plans will need. The $400 million part is really the initial absolute priority investment that is required to start the recovery process and kick it off. There will be a follow-up conference at the UN, which will be more focused on pledging. We have worked directly with the Government of Sierra Leone to talk to them about how we can ensure that their recovery plan is of good quality and essentially investable and prioritised, and we will continue to do all that work.

The hon. Lady also asks about the Ebola vaccine trials. In fact, we had some vaccines ready to go for phase 2 trials because the UK and DFID had already worked with the Medical Research Council and Glaxo Wellcome to help to support Ebola vaccines in the phase 1 trials. One of the learnings from my perspective is being clearer as an international community about what kinds of vaccine we want to have in stock at phase 1 stage, in order to be able to put them rapidly into phase 2, which is more expensive, if crisis hits. Also, streamlining the regulatory procedures is important, so that we can get the vaccines tested more rapidly when there is a real public health crisis element to them. Obviously, we all appreciate that the regulatory environment is there for a reason, which is to protect patients, but in this case, it was vital that we looked at how we could fast-track the Ebola vaccines. The trials have started in Liberia already. They are about to be started in Sierra Leone and Guinea.

On the number of patients, if anything we have a challenge, because fewer people are suffering from Ebola, but as the hon. Lady will understand, that is the patient population on whom we are testing the vaccines.

On WHO reform, I have had a chance now on a number of occasions to see Margaret Chan, both in London and, most recently, in Brussels. The UK has been a leading player, most recently in the special session on WHO reform, playing a constructive a role in helping us all to learn about how not only the WHO but the international community can better respond to such a public health crisis in the future.