Ebola Outbreak: Democratic Republic of the Congo — House of Lords, 2019-05-20
Topic: International Affairs
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I apologise to the House for the slight delay. With the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made today by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development. The Statement is as follows: "Ebola is back, this time in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is the largest outbreak in the country’s history, the second largest outbreak in the world and the first in a conflict zone. So far, 1,209 people have died. We must do much more to get a grip on this situation. This is not a simple question of virus control. If it were, we could simply repeat what we were able to do—at huge risk and cost—in Sierra Leone and Liberia and even what, to some extent, the DRC Government and the World Health Organization were able to do in Équateur and western DRC over the first six months of last year: go out into village after village, identify all the cases, trace all their contacts and their contacts’ contacts and, through preventing further chains of transmission, contain the outbreak However, this is not a situation like that. This is North Kivu, the centre of a conflict dominated by dozens of separate armed groups largely outside government control. Such groups have begun to attack and kill health workers, meaning that key international experts have had to be withdrawn from the epicentre of the virus. The decision not to allow this province to participate in the recent elections, partly on the grounds that it was an Ebola area, has fuelled suspicion that Ebola is a fabrication developed by hostile political forces. As a result, communities are reluctant to come forward when they have symptoms; they are also reluctant to change burial practices or accept the highly effective trial vaccine. The Congolese army and Government, which have successfully contained nine previous Ebola outbreaks over the past 45 years, are struggling to operate in the epicentre of this outbreak; so too are UN peacekeepers and the WHO. Although this area is very dangerous and difficult to access, it is not sparsely populated. The epicentre of the outbreak is Butembo, which has a population of a million people. The surrounding areas contain almost 18 million people To be clear, according to all our expert analysis here at the moment, the current disease profile poses only a low to negligible risk to the United Kingdom, so this Statement should not be a cause for panic at home. However, this outbreak is potentially devastating for the region. It could spread easily to neighbouring provinces and even to neighbouring countries I want to take a moment to commend all those in both the Congolese Government and the international community who are working in these very difficult situations to bring this disease under control. My predecessor, the right honourable Member for Portsmouth North—she just made her Statement to the House—paid tribute to Dr Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, who was killed in an attack by an armed group on 19 April while working for the WHO in the Ebola response on the front line. I imagine the whole House will join me in expressing our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Dr Richard, and to all those who have lost loved ones as a result of this outbreak We now need to grip this situation and ensure that this disease is contained. As you can imagine, this has been my key priority in the emergency field since I was appointed to this role just over two weeks ago. I spent the weekend in discussions with Sir Mark Lowcock, the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator, and the director-general of the WHO, Dr Tedros, who has so far paid eight visits to the affected area. I have also spoken about the response with the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed, and was pleased to see that there has been a real step up in the seniority of UN staff on the ground, particularly in places such as Butembo. Both the Health Secretary and the Foreign Secretary have been supporting this agenda in recent meetings over the past four days: the G7 health meeting and the WHO meetings in Geneva. I have also convened a meeting with a number of international experts in the field, including Brigadier Kevin Beaton, who helped lead the UK military response in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and the Chief Medical Officer to the UK Government On the basis of their advice, I concluded that we need to not only provide more money immediately to support the front-line response—health workers—but support the vaccination strategy and put more of our expert staff on the ground into the response. This is not just about recruiting doctors; we need people who understand and can work with the DRC Government and the military, even the opposition forces, to create the space for us to work. We need people who know the UN system well so that they can drive and shape the UN response. These people need to be not in London but on the ground because they need to be able to learn and adapt very quickly as the disease spreads. We are already deploying epidemiologists through our public health rapid support teams, in partnership with the Department of Health and Social Care. I am also now considering deploying additional officials with specialities in information management, adaptive management, anthropology and strategic communications However, it is important for us all to understand that this is not a problem the international community can solve from a distance. This is a political and security crisis as much as a health crisis; in the end, the response must be driven by local health workers and local leaders. There are some positive signs. DfID has been a key player in developing a new experimental vaccine for Ebola, which is proving highly effective. More than 119,000 doses have been administered so far in eastern DRC—an achievement that has probably saved thousands of lives. Modelling from Yale suggests that the use of the vaccine has reduced the geographic spread of Ebola by nearly 70%. This is not just about statistics; this is about, for example, Danielle, a 42 day-old baby in eastern Congo who survived Ebola last week thanks to the inspiring work of community volunteers, themselves Ebola survivors, and front-line health workers supported by UK aid Of course, we cannot do it alone. This needs grip and urgency, but it also needs humility. One reason why I have been talking in detail about this issue to Mark Green—my US opposite number—is not only do we share the US analysis but the Americans will inevitably be major players in this response in terms of finance and expertise, as indeed they were in the Liberia Ebola outbreak. We need many more international donors to match our financial contributions and to sustain the international and local health operations in the field. That is why the UK has just hosted an event specifically on Ebola to build support for the response in the World Health Assembly in Geneva. This is also why I have agreed that my colleague the Minister for Africa should visit eastern DRC immediately To conclude, this is a very dangerous situation where the Ebola virus is only one ingredient in a crisis which is fuelled by politics, community suspicion and armed violence. We need to act fast and we need to act generously, but above all we need the right people on the ground who are completely on top of the situation, who are able to come up with quick solutions and can guide us in keeping up support for—and, yes, sometimes the pressure on—the UN system, NGOs, opposition politicians and the Government of DRC to get this done. The stakes are very high and I will keep the House updated on our response" My Lords, that concludes the Statement.