DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now last week was the week the world woke up perhaps to the scale of the Ebola epidemic.  The British government sent troops, aircraft and a ship to Sierra Leone whilst back at home emergency services took part in a readiness exercise to prepare for British cases of the disease, but are we doing enough and are others?  In a moment I’ll speak to the former International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, but first I’m joined by Skype from Geneva by David Nabarro who is co-ordinating the UN’s efforts to contain the Ebola epidemic, a very good morning to you both gentlemen.  Mr Nabarro, you first, if you can just set in context for us your assessment of how big a threat Ebola poses.  

DAVID NABARRO: This outbreak started as a small focus in the interior of the country of Guinea in West Africa in March this year.  It’s now an enormous issue affecting the whole of Liberia and Sierra Leone and much of Guinea.  It is increasing at about doubling in size every four weeks, perhaps three weeks in some places and this is a very serious situation for Africa and for the world.  

DM: How would you compare it – different issues of course but huge effect, how would you compare it to HIV or SARS?

DAVID NABARRO: In scale it is bigger than the SARS outbreak which occurred about fifteen years ago and it is obviously a very different magnitude to HIV.  The reason why we are concerned about it is the virus is particularly unpleasant, it kills about 70% of those who are infected and secondly the transmission is occurring now in an increasingly large number of chains and this means that it is spreading not only within the countries but beyond the affected countries as we’ve seen. I would say it is not going to become a global pandemic but it does have the capacity to really damage the economies and societies of the countries in which it is already established and is a big threat to other countries unless they have got very good defences in place.  

DM: I want to throw into that analysis what we’ve just heard this morning, we’re hearing of potentially another Ebola case in the United States, in Texas.  Does that prove your point that it is likely to spread but the question then is can countries like the US, can countries like the UK cope with it?

DAVID NABARRO: During the last few years all nations have focused on what we call health security which is defending against newly arriving bacteria and viruses, by the way Ebola is caused by a virus, newly arriving bacteria and viruses most of which come from the animal kingdom and with mobilisation these kinds of problems are set to increase so health services become a kind of sentinel service, they are eternally vigilant, ready to pick up these outbreaks and in the UK, the US and other well advanced nations, health services are able to deal with these problems.  There will be cases but contacts are identified quickly and the situation is brought under control.  The problem is for countries that don’t have well developed health systems, there as we’ve seen it can become a major threat to the economy and indeed to national security.  

DM: And what is your prediction about how long it will take to bring it under control?

DAVID NABARRO: Well we’ve set ourselves as a global community the target of helping to ensure that the transmission rates are brought down, what we call the bending down of the epidemic curve, by the end of the year.  We’re saying ninety days from 1st October and in this we’re responding to the requests from the Presidents of the most affected countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, for a massive ramp up in response efforts, US and UK and others taking the lead with a very strong response and funnelling in capacity to increase the ability to deal with people with Ebola to a factor of twenty times greater than now and in the coming future than it was in August.  I believe that we have a very good chance of making this target and with this global solidarity behind the issue I hope I’ll be able to speak to you at the end of the year and say yes, it’s happened.  

DM: I hope we all do, Mr Nabarro thank you very much indeed, David Nabarro from the UN there.  Well I’m joined from Cheltenham by the former International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, a very good morning to you Mr Mitchell. I know you were listening along to that, do you think the UK and other countries are guilty of not having taken this seriously enough early enough?

ANDREW MITCHELL: Well unfortunately one of the characteristics of these sorts of crises is reaction inevitably is behind the curve, it’s too slow but I think that Britain is certainly doing the right thing.  What David Nabarro, who is a very experienced British UN civil servant was saying is absolutely right, we now have to confront the issue in the countries from which it is emanating, we need to massively boost the amount of resource we are putting in to both training and treating, particularly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, and I think the two key things that need to happen really are firstly that the international community needs to get behind the UN effort.  David Nabarro and his colleagues have set out very clearly what is needed in terms of funding and activity and everyone needs to get in behind that and secondly, Sierra Leone is a country with which Britain has very deep and long historic links, Liberia the same thing is true of America, Guinea has French connections, we need the European Union and those three countries particularly to champion the effort inside these countries in West Africa and make sure that treatment and training, these five new treatment centres that the British are setting up in Sierra Leone, the additional hospital and medical space, we need to bring that on stream as fast as we possibly can and then we will get on top of the curve on treating Ebola and we will start to see the effects that David said he wanted to see by the end of the year.

DM: But it does seem that if that happens and it is happening, that if British based personnel are working out there, there is a potential for some of them to unfortunately get Ebola and they’ll be treated here and then a danger of, as we’ve seen in other countries, a danger of further transmission.   

ANDREW MITCHELL: Well this is that danger although I think the British troops and medical staff who are in Sierra Leone will themselves be receiving the best possible protection in the world but they are putting their health on the line in order to try and stop the transmission and spreading of this awful disease and people will migrate away from the areas where this disease is centred in West Africa and they will move out across the region and away from the region itself and so actually treating in these countries and training the indigenous health facilities and capacity up, that’s very important but it can’t be done on a cost free basis.  As you rightly say, these wonderful men and women from the British army who are there in Sierra Leone taking this action are doing it in a selfless way and we should all be incredibly proud of what they’re doing to stem a truly terrible epidemic in a very poor and very challenged part of the world.  

DM: Mr Mitchell, thank you very much for your time, Andrew Mitchell there live for us in Cheltenham.