Re: WHO - Ebola press conference audio file - October 29, 2014
WHO ebola briefings:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/multimedia/ebola_briefing/en/
the audio has 67 minutes
10 pages .pdf:
http://www.who.int/entity/mediacentre/multimedia/vpc-29-october-2014.pdf?ua=1
---------------my snippets--------------------------------------------------------------------
my snippets:
we are now gunning
for a total of 56 Ebola treatment centres across the three countries and that would be for a
total of about 4,700 beds. At this point we’ve got 15 of those fully functional. We've got
commitments for both the build and the staffing of another 22 of them and there's 19 of them
for which we're still looking for primarily, for a medical team or a medical team to be
actually able to manage and run the facilities and of those 14 are in Liberia and about five in
Guinea. And with Sierra Leone right now we have tentative agreements on most of the
facilities, the Ebola treatment centres that are set up there. So, when just the existing capacity
is in place that will be just over 3,000, about 3,100 of the 4,700 targeted.
The current capacity is 1,047 beds that we know are open and functional across 15
treatment centres across the three countries.
rapid scale-up in burials and safe burial
practice in the month of September which hopefully is part of what we're seeing. There was a
huge push on information, general awareness in the communities
To the question of am I hopeful? I'm terrified that the information will be misinterpreted and
that people would start to think, oh great, this is under control.
60% survival rate in the Ebola
treatment centre, it's about 80% outside
My god, the single biggest mistake anybody could make now is to think, well, do we really need
all those beds? Absolutely because remember what you're looking at is treatment centres that
area geographically located across these countries in hot spot areas and what you're seeing is
care seeking really is related in some ways to how close those facilities are to their
communities, whether they can get it nearby, etc. So, having those across the country is
absolutely critical. The other thing to remember is you may have 4,707 beds and you may
have 4,707 patients. It doesn't mean they are where those beds are, so in any one geography
you've got to be overcapacitated. So, the real goal here, Anne, is to get your geographic
footprint and those 56 facilities that is the right footprint. And then you want to be able to be
scalable within those, so a lot of these are designed as 100 bed facilities; run them at 25 beds,
run them at 50 beds and remember the smaller you're running those facilities, the better. We
had huge facilities out there running hundreds of beds. That is dangerous and difficult. So,
part of this allows us to get to a safer way, also, of managing cases and improving the care.
Anne, you asked about the number of beds. We're all seeing reports in the media and we're
not tracking right now on a day-to-day basis the exact numbers but what we've heard is over
100 beds in different facilities empty and people have seen bigger numbers than that still.
Again, that's such a moving target. I think we need to be very, very careful about it. I would
definitely not be reducing capacity in terms of number of beds. But the number of beds that
you have active and maintain active at any one time may change as you scale to the burden of
disease.
in Sierra Leone we're still seeing a continued rate of increase in cases.
JO
And your projections that you gave us two weeks ago, five to ten thousand early
December; are you revisiting that?
BA
Yes, what we're going to do is as new information comes available, every two weeks
or definitely every month we will look at, okay, are the trends… we'll re-run the models and
look at the trends and see if those are actually changing. We haven't done that yet and some
people have said, well, shouldn't we be looking at the capacity needed?
... it would be a huge mistake for anybody to think, oh great, we're getting in front of this virus.
We can scale back on some of the investments planned.
BA
Oh, is the number $491 million. Where did Shauna go? She would have had the
number; $491 million.
UM
In the till?
BA
In the till, yes. In the till, if I remember correctly that's the in-the-till number.
UF
No, that's the pledges in.
BA
That's the pledge then in-the-till number. Right. Oh, sorry, let's be clear, Ilya, and to
your point because the $1 billion figure you're talking about, that's the Multi-Partner Trust
Fund that that the Global Ebola Response Coalition is pushing. David Nabarro, actually, was
quite pleased to see that. He had a target by the end of the month, if I remember correctly to
get over $100 million in real cash committed to this fund and I think he's hit $116 million, if I
remember. Is that the number?
JO
One of the countries is re-classifying the deaths and changing the death numbers, why
is that?
BA
Yes, I'm actually not aware of that, John. I'll have a look at it and try sort it out of
follow up with Chris Dye and he'll try and clarify it for you.
JO
Again, it was Sierra Leone and Liberia. They re-classified the deaths.
