Ebola Outbreak: DRC Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for International Development
Tom Brake
Main Page: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)Department Debates - View all Tom Brake's debates with the Department for International Development
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rory Stewart
From discussions in the Department, we have agreed a scale-up of the UK response. We have laid out the additional UK experts who want to go into the field. I have spoken to Mark Green, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. A retired US admiral who led their response in Liberia has just been out in the field in eastern DRC and has returned to Washington. I hope that a colleague will be able to meet him in Washington this coming week. The third thing is making sure, with Dr Tedros and Mark Lowcock from the WHO and the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, that we get the right UN experts in the field. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: more expertise, more quickly and closer the epicentre is the key.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I welcome the Secretary of State to his new role. He is perhaps that rare animal—a Minister who is respected on both sides of the House—so I wish him well. He will know that in 2014, the Ebola outbreak was classified as a public health emergency of international concern, as was the Zika outbreak in 2016. I assume that he is monitoring that. At what point does he think we might reach that stage, and what additional resources would that bring to tackle the outbreak?
Rory Stewart
That is a very good, technical question. Let me take the two responses in reverse order. First, we do not believe that the declaration would make a dramatic difference to the resources that we are able to deploy. In fact, we have just signed off on very significant additional resources. For various security reasons, I feel that we cannot talk about the exact sum, but we are putting much more resource into this operation. Secondly, we are monitoring this issue and the entire meeting last week was around that. It is an active question for the discussion currently taking place at the World Health Assembly, and we will keep the House updated on the declaration of the emergency.