Ebola

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lord Fowler for securing this important debate and all noble Lords who have contributed for their considered responses. As my noble friend Lord Fowler and others have made clear, this epidemic has terrible individual consequences, as well as wider social and economic consequences.

I join noble Lords in my extremely deep concern for Pauline Cafferkey. The Royal Free has just issued a statement, and I understand that her condition remains critical and is unchanged. The bravery and compassion shown by Pauline and her colleagues have helped to save thousands of lives in Africa. Like my noble friend Lord Fowler, I pay tribute to all those who have volunteered to help in that dreadful crisis. I here commend the son of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, Dr Neil Patel, as he undertakes his own challenging tasks in Sierra Leone, leaving shortly. It is vital that we never compromise the safety of such extremely brave volunteers and I can give the Government’s unequivocal commitment on that. Clearly, Save the Children and Public Health England keep this under constant review. They are reviewing the situation at the moment and we will update noble Lords as soon as possible.

I note what the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said on that and what he said about standing rosters. We have taken forward quite considerable amounts of development to ensure that those who wish to volunteer are properly trained before such a crisis and are able to be deployed in humanitarian disasters. There is new training offered by the Royal College of Surgeons to ensure that those who volunteer are safe and effective in dealing with the need in question, so I hope that the noble Lord will be encouraged to hear that. Guidelines on this particular crisis are kept under review all the time.

Noble Lords will appreciate that DfID is still focused on containing and eliminating the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone, where the UK has the leading international response. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for his tribute and I will pass it on to my outstanding colleagues in DfID. So far, we have committed more than £230 million to combat Ebola in Sierra Leone, and have already delivered more than 1,200 treatment and isolation beds and three new Ebola testing laboratories. We are also working closely with the Government of Sierra Leone to train and equip burial teams to ensure safe burial practices.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, mentioned differences in Liberia. I am sure he will know that there are all sorts of cultural differences between the two countries—different social norms and so on—which underpin what has happened in them in this epidemic. I am quite happy to go into further detail outside as to why there have been differences here.

As the noble Baronesses, Lady Kinnock and Lady Hayman, indicated, there are tentative signs that we may have reached the peak of the disease in Sierra Leone. But as both were saying, we should not be complacent; the response is far from over. Like my noble friend Lord Chidgey, I pay tribute to the response that has come from African countries.

The economic impact of this should not be underestimated. Various noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, made reference to that but I think we are all aware of it. The noble Lord also flagged the financial commitments of the World Bank. We are acutely aware that promises do not necessarily get delivered and we are working very hard to ensure that, where promises have been made, they are duly delivered.

We agree that a long-term interest in affected countries is essential to ensure recovery. The EU is convening a meeting in early March to look at resources for this and the WHO has a special session in late January to agree reforms, so a number of things are under way.

While our principal focus must continue to be on the ongoing response, it is essential, as my noble friend Lord Fowler pointed out, that we learn lessons from these actions both here in the United Kingdom and internationally. This Ebola outbreak has been unprecedented. More than 8,000 people have died and it is crucial that we make changes to ensure that this never happens again—and that lessons are carried over for other potential epidemics, as was pointed out by noble Lords, in particular my noble friends Lord Fowler and Lord Chidgey.

It is evident that international reform is required. The World Health Organization and the wider international system did not respond quickly enough to this threat before it got out of control. While progress has been made in efforts to strengthen global health security following SARS and avian flu outbreaks, the Ebola outbreak demonstrates that there is still much to do in responding efficiently to public health emergencies. As I have mentioned, the WHO executive board is convening a special session later this month to examine some of these issues, and I am sure that the points made by noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Patel, must be considered. In particular, we need to look at surveillance, stronger early warning and response mechanisms, and how the global community identifies and responds to potential crises in the future. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, I noted that Nigeria managed to check cases in the initial stages and it should be commended for that. Lessons needs to be learnt from how that was achieved, even though, again, we cannot be complacent.

The international community needs to be ready to respond rapidly and deploy public health experts immediately. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, had a number of important perceptions here as to changes that might be needed and the way in which the international system needs to link to what happens within a particular country and be sensitive to the arrangements and the views, beliefs and practices within those countries. This was a point which my noble friend Lord Chidgey also made.

In linking to national systems, a number of noble Lords emphasised the importance of strengthening health systems. We have been investing heavily in strengthening health systems in Sierra Leone through our bilateral aid programme but, barely 10 years after the end of a devastating civil war, health systems are still fragile and unable to cope with a crisis of this scale. My noble friend Lord Fowler made it crystal clear that the weakness of health systems is fundamental in this case. International support from DfID, but also from the World Bank, IMF and UN, will be critical in supporting Sierra Leone and the wider region to recover from this devastating crisis. Supporting the health sector ravaged by Ebola will be a priority, as well as supporting vulnerable groups such as orphans, children, women and girls.

I heard what my noble friend Lord Fowler said about consistency in support. That seemed to me to be an argument for the 0.7% Bill, which will come before this House on 23 January. I hope that noble Lords will support it. The aid budget has often been subject to easy battering in the past. Consistency and predictability are vital, which is why it is important to legislate for that level of aid. I welcome the support of the party opposite on this. Investment in human development is vital to the elimination of poverty and the growth of developing countries. I can assure noble Lords that we fully recognise that. In DfID, 20% of our budget in Sierra Leone has been spent on health programmes, and that will continue to be the case when this crisis is over as well. We agree that weak health systems in the affected countries have contributed to the rapid spread of Ebola.

We also agree that there has been a significant drop in the utilisation of health services, a point made by my noble friend Lord Chidgey and others, including the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. We are therefore working with experts to determine strategies to decrease malaria deaths, including using new drugs and making sure that there are adequate stocks in Sierra Leone to try to address this. We recognise that it is vital to prepare the health sector for future shocks and have started to consider this challenge. National institutions are crucial but we also recognise that it will take time to build up health systems capable of dealing with major epidemics. That is why we focus on poorer developing countries; that is where the need is greatest.

To improve response to infectious disease outbreaks we need to ensure that, as far as possible, we have proactively identified potential diseases and developed technologies such as vaccines and treatments to address them. A number of noble Lords made this point. We need to be able to deliver rapidly clinical trials of promising candidates, resolve intellectual property disputes over them, scale up production, put in place adequate delivery capacity and manage the increased liability risks, while securing financing for all this.

I would dispute what my noble friend Lord Fowler said about reducing our aid spend in Sierra Leone. In 2010-11, we spent £51 million; in 2013-14, it was £69 million.

Our support for vaccines has been a major move by DfID under this Government. My right honourable friend Stephen O’Brien was quite remarkable in the way that he brought forward the proposals on support for what were called neglected tropical diseases, and I think that people will pay tribute to him and DfID for the work that was done. I think that we have a strong record in this regard, and that is something that we will continue to focus on and to regard as very important.

Our focus remains on ridding Sierra Leone and the surrounding region of Ebola. It is critical that we learn the lessons from this crisis to ensure that it never happens again. We realise how a crisis like this affects us all and how it has devastating consequences, both individually and more widely on societies and economies. We understand that, and we all need to see what lessons need to be learnt and then—most importantly, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, indicated—acted upon.