I was one of the responders to the Ebola
crisis of 2014 to 2016 by the time it
ended in 2016 it had become the largest
global health crisis of the of this
decade because of the scope it’s usually
said that in crisis the first casualty
is truth I’d like to say that in crisis
really the first casualty is trust and
I’ll tell you why from a very young age
one of my earliest memories out of my
parents loading us up into the family
car taking my siblings and myself away
from the relative comfort of our home to
go help communities that we are facing
some kind of crisis and trying to
alleviate their situation and this early
experience is where what directly
influenced my career choice to study
medicine and when I graduated and
qualified I immediately got involved
with meeting the needs medical needs of
medically underserved populations around
several countries in western central
Africa including at the height of the
Darfur crisis in 2007 where I was a
medical officer with the United Nations
after close to a decade of doing this I
came to the US for some further
education well I don’t know if crisis
was following me but the next year in
the forest of a tiny West African nation
called Guinea the Ebola crisis started
and cases continue to mount and the
disease continued to spread by early
2014 Ebola had gripped the attention of
the of the world including Western
nations and in the news in newspapers
everywhere the crowd was a body ball and
what the crisis was becoming so as water
control continue to defy any attempts at
controlling Ebola reading the newspapers
are watching the news I was familiar
with these places and I was drawn to go
back and very soon I realized I had to
go back and be a part of the solution to
the problem and I got the buy-in from my
wife and volunteered in September 2014 I
bid my family goodbye boarded a plane
and left for Liberia on the flight to
Monrovia for the first time I felt fear
because this was the situation I hadn’t
encountered before was I ever going to
see my family again but as the plane got
closer to the airport my thoughts turned
to what had changed like what was going
to be different and what was the same
from the last time I was there it wasn’t
long before I got my answer because as
the small handful of passengers
descended from the plane the the airport
itself looked like a military camp you
had soldiers deployed all over the
tarmac walking towards the arrival hall
at the airport just a small handful of
us the departure hall was filled with a
horde of people waiting to board the
plane and leave the country or flee the
country as we’re on the right into town
ambulances were everywhere sirens
blaring you had this open bat pickup
trucks with people up who addressed in
what I appear to be spacesuits carting
away the dead separating families and
taking the sick into isolation even
overhead there was a militia helicopter
flying low carrying out aerial patrols
and it truly felt and looked like a city
under siege but this time the enemy was
a virus but no less deadly than if
bullets were flying now Ebola is a
disease caused by a virus the mode of
transmission is human to human so
efforts at control are aimed at
interrupts in the human to human
transmission so what do you have to do
the responders have to go into the
communities find the sick and isolate
them for treatment then monitor their
contacts in quarantine for 21 days to
make sure they don’t fall sick and then
also educate the communities on what
harmful practices they need to suspend
or stop for the duration of the epidemic
I quickly joined the response and
settled into my role as a field
coordinator with the World Health
Organization and the World Health
Organization had people in all the
communities helping to interface with
the communities to push back Ebola now
looking back at that time it’s clear
that on the line the epidemic of a virus
was an overlying epidemic of mistrust as
you can also see from newspaper accounts
of that period and many factors were
responsible for this widespread mistrust
one help was slow in coming to the
affected countries although from early
2014 much earlier in the year it was
clear that the epidemic had overwhelmed
the response capacities of the affected
countries the international community
was really slow to respond when help
came enough was in don’t we engage the
naturist
the natural natural structures in those
communities and this led to poorly
crafted messaging culturally offensive
handing of corpses and separation of
sick people from their families
when the military and police got
involved in the response then trust fled
the environment completely and when
Trust was lost sick people went
underground
dead bodies secret barriers continued
riots escalated rumors we arrived and a
Bullock is SK Bullock cases the number
of Ebola cases exploded eventually we
started to trust each other more we
started to collaborate more and
cooperate more and when this happened
something amazing happened
some of the trickiest problems of the
response the solution started to come
from the communities themselves the
ladies to see before you is a survival
for the tricky problem of hands-on care
for the sick while staying safe those
who had gotten sick and survived
we’re now immune and they got involved
with hands-on care for those that were
still sick the number of people that
died the number of cases that died
dropped for the kadhi for the tricky
problem of monitoring people in the
communities and making sure that those
that were sick came forward for
treatment the community itself involves
structures the natural leaders in the
community the Chiefs the women groups
the youth groups that religious leaders
organize themselves and make sure that
those that we are sick we are brought
forward for treatment they made sure
that those are in quarantine we are
taking care of they were provided food
and supplies to make sure that they
stayed the full 21 days without coming
out of quarantine the community itself
ensured that sick people and there was
no burial of the dead no secret barriers
continued and then the country has long
porous borders that are really proved
difficult to monitor the communities
themselves started to police
borders they evolve strategies that when
they see strangers coming
the interviewed strangers found out
their mission and took their picture and
wrote their names down so that it to
make it easier for them to track in case
they ended up becoming stick people even
experts in other areas got involved in
the response and I’ve been motorcyclist
our treated a fleet of motorcycles with
biohazard boxes an enhanced suspension
in these countries they are really bad
road networks and during the rainy
season is very hard for cars to gain
access to some areas this intervention
and this innovation allowed every part
of the country to become accessible so
these motorcycles will go in and go get
blood samples from the most remote parts
of the country even musicians got in on
the action and they started to sing
songs and the message now changed from
Ebola kills to let’s stop Ebola together
and eventually in 2016 the outbreak was
declared over now trust we have in
Columbus here we’re grappling with
different kinds of crises there is the
opioid crisis the healthcare crisis and
there were some crises that are more
personal to you and I say that trust
must not be allowed to be a casualty
because when Trust is abundant the
ingenuity of the communities themselves
rises up to save the day and solve the
problem thank you
[Applause]
crisis of 2014 to 2016 by the time it
ended in 2016 it had become the largest
global health crisis of the of this
decade because of the scope it’s usually
said that in crisis the first casualty
is truth I’d like to say that in crisis
really the first casualty is trust and
I’ll tell you why from a very young age
one of my earliest memories out of my
parents loading us up into the family
car taking my siblings and myself away
from the relative comfort of our home to
go help communities that we are facing
some kind of crisis and trying to
alleviate their situation and this early
experience is where what directly
influenced my career choice to study
medicine and when I graduated and
qualified I immediately got involved
with meeting the needs medical needs of
medically underserved populations around
several countries in western central
Africa including at the height of the
Darfur crisis in 2007 where I was a
medical officer with the United Nations
after close to a decade of doing this I
came to the US for some further
education well I don’t know if crisis
was following me but the next year in
the forest of a tiny West African nation
called Guinea the Ebola crisis started
and cases continue to mount and the
disease continued to spread by early
2014 Ebola had gripped the attention of
the of the world including Western
nations and in the news in newspapers
everywhere the crowd was a body ball and
what the crisis was becoming so as water
control continue to defy any attempts at
controlling Ebola reading the newspapers
are watching the news I was familiar
with these places and I was drawn to go
back and very soon I realized I had to
go back and be a part of the solution to
the problem and I got the buy-in from my
wife and volunteered in September 2014 I
bid my family goodbye boarded a plane
and left for Liberia on the flight to
Monrovia for the first time I felt fear
because this was the situation I hadn’t
encountered before was I ever going to
see my family again but as the plane got
closer to the airport my thoughts turned
to what had changed like what was going
to be different and what was the same
from the last time I was there it wasn’t
long before I got my answer because as
the small handful of passengers
descended from the plane the the airport
itself looked like a military camp you
had soldiers deployed all over the
tarmac walking towards the arrival hall
at the airport just a small handful of
us the departure hall was filled with a
horde of people waiting to board the
plane and leave the country or flee the
country as we’re on the right into town
ambulances were everywhere sirens
blaring you had this open bat pickup
trucks with people up who addressed in
what I appear to be spacesuits carting
away the dead separating families and
taking the sick into isolation even
overhead there was a militia helicopter
flying low carrying out aerial patrols
and it truly felt and looked like a city
under siege but this time the enemy was
a virus but no less deadly than if
bullets were flying now Ebola is a
disease caused by a virus the mode of
transmission is human to human so
efforts at control are aimed at
interrupts in the human to human
transmission so what do you have to do
the responders have to go into the
communities find the sick and isolate
them for treatment then monitor their
contacts in quarantine for 21 days to
make sure they don’t fall sick and then
also educate the communities on what
harmful practices they need to suspend
or stop for the duration of the epidemic
I quickly joined the response and
settled into my role as a field
coordinator with the World Health
Organization and the World Health
Organization had people in all the
communities helping to interface with
the communities to push back Ebola now
looking back at that time it’s clear
that on the line the epidemic of a virus
was an overlying epidemic of mistrust as
you can also see from newspaper accounts
of that period and many factors were
responsible for this widespread mistrust
one help was slow in coming to the
affected countries although from early
2014 much earlier in the year it was
clear that the epidemic had overwhelmed
the response capacities of the affected
countries the international community
was really slow to respond when help
came enough was in don’t we engage the
naturist
the natural natural structures in those
communities and this led to poorly
crafted messaging culturally offensive
handing of corpses and separation of
sick people from their families
when the military and police got
involved in the response then trust fled
the environment completely and when
Trust was lost sick people went
underground
dead bodies secret barriers continued
riots escalated rumors we arrived and a
Bullock is SK Bullock cases the number
of Ebola cases exploded eventually we
started to trust each other more we
started to collaborate more and
cooperate more and when this happened
something amazing happened
some of the trickiest problems of the
response the solution started to come
from the communities themselves the
ladies to see before you is a survival
for the tricky problem of hands-on care
for the sick while staying safe those
who had gotten sick and survived
we’re now immune and they got involved
with hands-on care for those that were
still sick the number of people that
died the number of cases that died
dropped for the kadhi for the tricky
problem of monitoring people in the
communities and making sure that those
that were sick came forward for
treatment the community itself involves
structures the natural leaders in the
community the Chiefs the women groups
the youth groups that religious leaders
organize themselves and make sure that
those that we are sick we are brought
forward for treatment they made sure
that those are in quarantine we are
taking care of they were provided food
and supplies to make sure that they
stayed the full 21 days without coming
out of quarantine the community itself
ensured that sick people and there was
no burial of the dead no secret barriers
continued and then the country has long
porous borders that are really proved
difficult to monitor the communities
themselves started to police
borders they evolve strategies that when
they see strangers coming
the interviewed strangers found out
their mission and took their picture and
wrote their names down so that it to
make it easier for them to track in case
they ended up becoming stick people even
experts in other areas got involved in
the response and I’ve been motorcyclist
our treated a fleet of motorcycles with
biohazard boxes an enhanced suspension
in these countries they are really bad
road networks and during the rainy
season is very hard for cars to gain
access to some areas this intervention
and this innovation allowed every part
of the country to become accessible so
these motorcycles will go in and go get
blood samples from the most remote parts
of the country even musicians got in on
the action and they started to sing
songs and the message now changed from
Ebola kills to let’s stop Ebola together
and eventually in 2016 the outbreak was
declared over now trust we have in
Columbus here we’re grappling with
different kinds of crises there is the
opioid crisis the healthcare crisis and
there were some crises that are more
personal to you and I say that trust
must not be allowed to be a casualty
because when Trust is abundant the
ingenuity of the communities themselves
rises up to save the day and solve the
problem thank you
[Applause]
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