Ebola - the ugly virus by Derek Wyatt
I took a call early one Saturday morning in late November to ask if I would consider going to Cairo to attend an Ebola conference. I could hardly spell the word Ebola and had not been that focused on the dreadful events in west Africa especially in Sierra Leone. I was rather skeptical as to whether I could really be of any use.
The caller was persistent and said that the organisers (Microsoft) were looking for people who thought outside the box. I was liking the flattery. The event was two weeks away and they wanted an answer as soon as.
I did a little research and noted that the UNO and WHO had rather let the whole epidemic slip through its fingers. It was as if the donor countries, largely western powers, had signed off £3 million here and $2 million there and forgotten about it. Until. Until a dribble of cases involving nurses catching the virus had caused headline news in America and the UK.
I was more or less decided on going when suddenly our Egyptian Embassy was closed in Cairo with our Foreign Office claiming serious security threats. I made some discreet enquiries but no-one could shed any light on what these were. The FCO in Whitehall repeated the essence of the press release. I pressed the organisers about security and they were reassuring. I went.
Dear Reader: our Embassy was closed for a couple of days not because of some obvious breach or risk but because our Ambassador had called for the permanent closure of a main artery road alongside the Nile which bordered its walls. As if. Traffic in Cairo on a good day is chaotic and moving in the capital a few miles in the evening rush hour can take two or three hours. The Embassy duly re-opened. We were made to look rather parochial.
The conference was over two days and 40 people - about half from different parts of the Microsoft empire - had flown in from all over the world. They were clearly our next generation of technologists and thinkers which, when you have past retirement age like me, was incredibly reassuring.
The virulent Ebola virus is passed by touch whether by holding or shaking hands,
by a welcoming hug or by sleeping together. Local customs have meant that
families have said goodbye when burying those who have died with the virus with
some manifestation of touch. This has compounded the issue.
We assembled each day out at the new and impressive digital campus to the north
of Cairo. You could easily - but for the clemency of the weather - been
attending a conference at the Cambridge Science Park in England. Cairo may have
failed its Arab Spring, Summer and Winter but its stock market is booming and
confidence has returned. If only its leaders could show some vision Cairo would
be seen as the intellectual capital of Africa not as a failed city.
Our first day was given over to four areas:
** Data: what do we have and what we don't have?
** Emergency Infrastructure: communications v data needs
** Social Mining: A predictive of Ebola's spread
** Epidemiology & Biological Computation
A series of guest speakers, chairs and panels addressed these issues and by the
end of the day we had identified over 30 problem areas ranging from poor
telecommunications, lack of education, the need for capacity development, oral
cultures and indifferent leadership.
At the end of the last session on the first day I had suggested establishing a global Chaos Centre.
It would be situated in the area around the British Library which I call the North Bank because it houses the
Wellcome Trust, UCH, Google, Facebook, The Guardian and dozens and dozens of
start ups.
Chaos would deal in one place with the after effects of the world's dislocations
- an earthquake, a tsunami, a flood, a tornado, an out break of Sars, Aids and
Ebola. But each of these would have a hub and we should establish one of them
namely an African Ebola Institute in Cairo.
It had been a rich and absorbing day.
On the second day, we road tested not the Chaos Centre but the idea of an Ebola
African institute and along with my partner in crime (the original phone caller back in
November) we were asked to write up and circulate a paper after we had returned home.
We did this in record time and hopes are high at Microsoft that funding will be committed by a number of
countries and foundations though this is not a given yet.
Ebola was named after a river in the Congo or DRC nearly 40 years ago when it was first discovered.
There are outbreaks most years but these have been confined to isolated villages
and contained. There are five strains and it is carried by a fruit bat and
possibly other animals. The current outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria (briefly) is the worst we have ever seen.
Shortly, I shall be catching up with some of the Microsoft team and pressing the
case for the African centre. In the meantime, if anyone has a spare £50m I could
start to work on that Chaos concept.