 Hello and welcome to this virtual Ebola reporting workshop in English. This is Binidit Paveo live from London. Thank you to you all, wherever you are, for joining this interactive training session. An informative and really interesting one so far. Here's our third expert about to join us. It'll be Julia Belouz and she'll be talking to us about improving Ebola reporting. Julia, welcome from Washington. Thank you so much. So let me tell everyone that you are the health reporter for vox.com. You were in 2013-2014 the Night Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. You've written many articles for various publications including the British Medical Journal, The Economist, The Medical Post, McLean's, The Times of London, and I could go on, but time doesn't permit. So you're going to talk to us about trends you've seen in reporting on Ebola and lessons that can be learned to improve reporting in the future. And that will be through examples of stories from the African media as well as media from around the world. So let's begin, Julia. Thank you so much, Binidit. So I'm going to flip through. Oh, there we go. So 10 lessons here from reporting on the 2014 Ebola epidemic. And as you said, I'm going to draw on examples from various places and things that I've seen through both my reporting and obviously following the story very closely. So the first example, this is a story in the Guardian newspaper in the U.K. and I guess the U.S. as well. And you can see here it's talking about the number of Ebola infections in West Africa. It passes 16,000. This is a recent story. There have been many, many stories like this. The World Health Organization every week comes out with situation reports and we reporters dutifully report on those numbers. At the beginning of the epidemic in particular, I think there was a lot of emphasis on these numbers and on the virus as if it didn't live within people and within societies. And I think this is something I started to think about as I was reporting on this, particularly at the early stages, that there was this tendency to focus on the numbers and the virus and not the cultural context, not the societies, not how this virus turned up in West Africa and completely changed people's lives. What this means? What does this epidemic mean for people on the ground? What does it mean that schools have been closed in Sierra Leone, that people have been home from work in Liberia for such a long period of time? What does it mean that children aren't getting routine vaccinations as a result of the health systems being overwhelmed by this epidemic? I think we did a good job more recently of capturing those stories. But there were months where the international spread of Ebola, I think that was confirmed back in March, and it took a few months, I think, to get those human interests on the ground stories. And if I were covering this again, I would try to get to those stories much sooner and to remember that we need to focus on the impact of this epidemic on society and on the people who have been touched by this. This is an example that I think did a really good job from the East African newspaper. How Ebola has turned lives upside down in Sierra Leone, and it was just this fantastic report from a newspaper reporter who went to Sierra Leone, and he talks about what it's like to leave his wife, how he has to have this negotiation within his home, the fear at home about him going over there, the kind of precautions and steps that he takes, and then he talks about what he finds in Sierra Leone. I think there was an example of this woman who, she has a fight with her husband and she's left bleeding, and the nurses in the hospital think that she has Ebola and she ends up dying, and she's later tested for the virus and it turns out to be negative. So this is again very human, the reporter situating himself within the story and then also capturing these incredible stories from the ground. But again, it's a recent story, I think it was a November 12th publication date, and I think this is one of the lessons that we need to learn from this epidemic, that we should have got to these stories a little bit earlier on before we were already months into the epidemic. At Vox, we did this thing called Ebola narrative, so living through Ebola, and we started to just capture oral histories, like this virus turned up in people's lives, and how are their lives changed, so you can see, unfortunately we don't have interactivity here, but you can see we captured the story of a daughter who lost her father, who was a doctor in Liberia to Ebola. There was the story of a virus hunter who goes out into the rainforest of Africa and he searches for the viral host for Ebola, like testing all these different animals and talks about what that's like. We talked to nurses, doctors, people who were living there and just had their lives completely turned upside down by the arrival of Ebola in their country. And I think this is a really moving piece. It's going to be something that people can even, I think, refer back to for a long time. I hope that we can update it, and we have been updating it as we've been hearing from the people that we're featuring in these oral histories. And again, I don't think we launched it until September or October, so again months into the epidemic, but it's something to think about when we're covering these types of stories, I think, as reporters going forward. Another thing that became very clear in the reporting, so this is from Nigeria's Guardian newspaper, drinking this mixture made from a plant known as Uedu can protect people against Ebola virus. Of course, we know there are no approved cures or treatments yet, or vaccines, and yet there were so many examples in newspapers of these kind of single source stories, people making claims about a supposed cure, treatment, and how this could be effective in the fight against Ebola. And you just imagine all the people who might have gone out to purchase this, spent their money on these treatments and cures that have absolutely no science behind them that aren't efficacious. And I think that it was kind of a reminder that especially as health reporters, we need to remember when we're writing these stories, it's almost, you're like a doctor writing a prescription. People go out and they listen to what media reports are saying, and there was just a lot of examples of a real lack of skepticism about some of the things that were coming, about some of the claims, sorry, that people were making about treatments and cures. I think this was a good example from the National Mirror in Nigerian paper, and they do take a skeptical approach here. It was a recent editorial about rapid testing for Ebola and claims people were making about these test kits. And as you can see, the headline is crooks and fake Ebola test kits. And the thing that was fantastic about this editorial is that they use it as an opportunity to talk about how you actually get Ebola and to reassure the public a bit. So they talked about how it's actually very difficult to contract this disease. You need direct contact with people's bodily fluids in order to get the disease. And they talked a little bit about what the Nigerian government was doing to stop the spread of Ebola. So it was this, I thought, a really good example of, you know, taking a skeptical approach to some of the claims people are making about their Ebola fighting tools, whatever they're hocking, and then trying to send a public health message through their reporting. So another thing that I noticed pretty early on was that there was this real emphasis on, again, medicines and not really on the health system, not the context in which these medicines would be delivered. So this is an example from Newsweek magazine. And it was, I think this is from the summer, if I can see here. It was from pretty early on, from August. And they're talking about this secret serum, which is the ZMAP experimental treatment that's being developed, that was developed in Canada and now in the U.S. And they call it this kind of, they give it, well, the name, secret serum, which is kind of ridiculous in and of itself, but it took off in the U.S. media. I think it was CNN that started calling ZMAP a secret serum. And there was just so much emphasis on the drugs and on these experimental therapies. And there wasn't a lot of emphasis on the health systems issues that were clearly the reason that we had this epidemic was taking off in West Africa. The lack of preparedness, the lack of good surveillance networks, the lack of robust public health messaging and communications. Instead, there was this really strong focus on the drugs, which are, of course, important. And there may be this silver lining of the epidemic. We're seeing all these treatments and vaccines. I think there are more than a dozen going through clinical trials right now, which is incredible. But we don't want to focus on medicines more than the reason we're actually seeing this virus overtake a society in West Africa, which are health systems issues. So I think that was another lesson that I was reflecting on as I was watching the coverage of this epidemic. Junior health issues also, therefore, and health systems, you're referring to the lack of infrastructure, the poor infrastructure in those countries. Yes. To help deliver the medicines once, you know, they will be found in vaccines. Absolutely, yes. So you talk to people on the ground and you hear about how there are very few labs that can test for Ebola. In Sierra Leone, for example, I think there were only a few people who were coordinating the Disease Surveillance Network for the whole country. So they weren't ready to identify this virus. I think it was three months after the virus turned up in Guinea. And we already had international spread before anyone realized that what we were dealing with was Ebola. And again, of course, it was the first time that Ebola had turned up in West Africa, so it wasn't really on there. You know, it wasn't on their radar, but you would imagine that there are very clear, yeah, the lack of infrastructure kind of helped this virus take root in West Africa and spread very quickly. And it took a while, I think, for that message to come through in some of the media reports. That makes sense. Thank you for that. Yes, absolutely. So another thing. Do you continue? Yeah, so contextualizing hope about new drugs. So this is a story where they're talking about how, you know, this clinical trial, this drug is arriving in West Africa and it's offering a lot of hope for people. And there are many stories about that, about cures, again, about medicines, about HIV, drugs being used to treat Ebola, about Z-MAP. And they're extremely exuberant and really hopeful, and they lack the context about the clinical trials process, the fact that, you know, only of the 5,000 compounds that are discovered at an early stage, I think there are only about five that actually make it into testing in humans and then maybe one that's approved. So, you know, of all the wonderful treatments that we're seeing being tested now, maybe we'll have one that makes it through clinical trials and ends up being approved for use in people. So I found that that message was missing from a lot of the reports, so contextualizing, you know, what it actually takes to bring a drug to market, what it will take to test, to go through all the stages of clinical trials testing in humans. You have the drug companies. You know, they... I'm sure there are altruistic reasons for being involved in Ebola drug development, but they were also kind of hitting the media very early talking about how they were entering testing in humans, how they were scaling up, manufacturing the vaccine before it was even tested in humans and approved should it turn out to be efficacious. And the media kind of, we were running along with those reports without giving readers context about how difficult it is to actually ever bring drugs to market, which I think is really important anytime you're talking about new drugs or therapies, especially in a situation as dire as we're seeing play out with this epidemic. So this is something that was kind of showing up in a lot of the reporting. So reporting on unconfirmed cases, particularly in the U.S., there were tons of reports on, you know, that a patient has turned up in a hospital in Hawaii who we suspect might have Ebola. When this happened in D.C., this is a story from D.C. Hospital evaluating a patient who has Ebola-like symptoms in my own newsroom where people are extremely informed about the virus. They know how difficult it is to contract Ebola. There was fear. There was panic. People were asking me, like, go to my cottage and leave D.C. And what does this mean for us? And, you know, we ended up taking this approach of we're not going to report on unconfirmed cases. We're going to wait until we have CDC confirmation to actually disseminate news about a suspected case because, you know, so many of them turned out to be false or they turned out to be malaria. They turned out to be flu. We did end up reporting on the D.C. case, but we used it as a way, sorry, as the unconfirmed D.C. case, but we used it as a way to talk about how many unconfirmed cases there were. So of the, I don't know, hundreds of potential cases we saw in the U.S., only a few turned out to be confirmed cases. So that was a way to kind of reassure the public and use the news to give people context about what this actually meant. So I think. Can I just introduce a quick thing, Julia? Absolutely. I would encourage anybody. This is your last chance, folks, across the world as you watch us. We know South Africa, Accra, and others have been very active. Do get your questions in. This is your chance to do so. Sorry, Julia. Go ahead. No problem. So that was a policy we took in the newsroom and I think it was something to reflect on in reporting on future epidemics. You want to actually disseminate news on a case, especially if so many of them, as we saw with Ebola, particularly in America, turned out to be, to not be confirmed cases. So the other thing that came up through, looking at the reporting, was some of the outlandish claims that were being disseminated through media. So this is a story that came through all Africa and it talked about essentially Ebola zombies. So it was Ebola patients who died of the virus in Liberia and there were two women. And to the amazement of residents and onlookers, the deceased reportedly regained life, which is clearly a totally outlandish claim. These, you know, these claims made their way into newspapers around the world. This was an example from the mail online and there were similar reports in the states as well on how ISIS jihadists were supposedly going to use Ebola as a weapon of terror. So they were going to affect themselves with Ebola, travel across the world and use this, you know, infect other people, use this as a method of suicide or jihad. And these are clearly completely outlandish claims and, you know, they were reported without skepticism. They were reported as, you know, this is an expert from this university who says Ebola is this potential terror weapon or here are these cases of Ebola zombies resurrecting in Liberia. And again, I wish that the reporters had taken a more critical skeptical lens and given people context about the absurdity and outlandishness of these claims instead of stoking public fear at a time when people were so clearly afraid already. And this is another thing that became very clear was there was a difference between people who were using science to inform their reporting on how Ebola spreads and people who, I don't know if the reporting was based on Hollywood depictions or what it was based on, but who were clearly quite removed from the science of Ebola contagion. So this example is talking about how male survivors are told to abstain from sex for three months because we know Ebola can be sexually transmitted for up to three months even after a person has recovered, which is something that you find in the literature I think well back into the 90s they were finding Ebola in the semen of survivors. So, you know, it was, I think, you know, you're seeing an example here where people are actually making an evidence-based report on Ebola contagion and what bodily fluids can transmit Ebola. And I think this was something that the public definitely wanted. They wanted to know what the science said about how you can and can't get Ebola. And we're now seeing like the New England Journal has dedicated issue after issue to Ebola. There's so much new science coming out of West Africa. This is one of the upsides of having this horrible epidemic with so many people, so many cases that we finally have this massive population to draw lessons from and to learn about, you know, where Ebola lives in the body, how it's spread. We're learning about the importance of supportive care and oral rehydration. And, you know, disseminating that, talking about the science to readers and to your audience is so hugely important. And it's something that I hope we would do with this epidemic going forward and in future epidemics. And then, so this is another... That's epidemics over Ebola, but also any health pandemic. Yeah, any, when you're talking about infectious disease, to try to stay true to the science, talk to people who have actually studied the virus and get an understanding of how this virus spreads in people, what we know about it, communicate the uncertainty. So there are things that we still, we're still learning about Ebola until this year. There were only, I think, less than 2,000 cases in history, which is a tiny number, a tiny sample to draw lessons from. But there were some things we knew and some things we are less clear about and to kind of communicate that information to readers in a nuanced way is so important. So this was another thing that... This is a story we ran at Vox. Can you get Ebola on a plane? So this came out just a couple months ago and it was a time when we had already run numerous stories on how you can and can get Ebola and Ebola contagion. But it was at a time when, during the midterm elections here, there was a lot of discussion around travel bans and what was happening at airports to protect people from Ebola and issuing visas to people from West Africa and whether you are at risk getting on a plane at this time where we have this epidemic that's going on in West Africa. And my editor, we had a meeting and we were talking about, you know, what are our readers interested in now? What do they want to know? And my editor said, you know, I think you should really take your story on how you can and can get Ebola and kind of tweak it to talk about how you can and can get Ebola on a plane. And I thought, oh my God, I can't write one of these stories on Ebola contagion. But it ended up being exactly what the readers wanted at this time. I think it was shared, I don't know, like 20,000 times on Facebook. It was read hundreds of thousands of times. It was picked up on the BBC, republished in South African newspapers, asked permission to republish a story. And I think it was an example of this need to really meet readers where you are. As a reporter at this time, I had already been covering this epidemic for months. I thought we were very clear on how Ebola spreads. I was ready to move on to other stories. But clearly, this was something that the readers really wanted at this moment. So that was a very important lesson for me to get into the minds of readers and remember where are they at this moment and how can you meet them where they are. And then just wrapping up, this is a really interesting graph. We made a box. So you'll see the purple line is Google Trends. So it's search traffic for the word Ebola. And then the gray bars in the background are cases. So you see that despite the mounting case toll, the trends in search traffic go up and down. And they were, in particular, that big spike that came in August when we had the first Americans who contracted Ebola in Liberia return to America. And there was just this massive public interest in it. But I think this is a reminder that public interest is going to ebb and flow. But we have a duty. Clearly, this epidemic is still going on. The transmission is still out of control in Sierra Leone. We're seeing things stabilize in Liberia and getting a little bit. But there are still really big challenges there to finally stamping out the virus in these countries. And we need to keep figuring out interesting ways to get readers into the story, to continue to cover the story, to keep the story alive, even when the interest might be fading. And I think it's up to us as reporters to find fascinating stories that will keep people interested throughout this epidemic, even when we see things kind of slow down in public discourse a little bit. And I think that is it, Benedict. Well, Julia, thank you very much. Thank you. Very interesting the way you kicked off there with the big stories about numbers, which again, praise on fear, the virulence, which is indeed real, but it really, and then the terror link also with the Ebola virus and jihadists, really sort of, in that sense, cheap journalism. Stoking fear, I think, was the word you used. Absolutely. It's important. It's people who are affected, Ebola, individuals, entire families, communities. It has a cultural, social, also an economic impact. And it's a human interest story. They are human beings, and we need to remember that in our reporting. So let me just fire off one or two quick questions. One is, briefly, what do you think reporters in African countries that have not had an outbreak break yet of Ebola should do? I think one of the key things that needs to be done is informing the public. So again, I like to think if you're writing on health stories, you are like a doctor writing a prescription. People take what they read in the media and they act on it. We have so much evidence of that. People have studied things that celebrities say or media reports how they have such a clear impact on not only people's actions and their health decision making, but also even public policy. So you have an opportunity to educate and inform the public about the best science to bear on public discourse. And I think getting through those key messages about how does Ebola spread, how have other countries stopped the spread of this virus? What obviously bringing the human interest element, what has happened in places that have been ravaged by this epidemic? How they brought things under control is really important. And so I think those are the kinds of things if I were in countries that hadn't experienced the outbreak, I'd focus on that. I'd also look at what is my country doing to prepare for a potential outbreak here. I'd talk to people in the public health department, people in government about holding these people to account about how they're getting things ready for Ebola and report on that as well. I think that would be a huge service to readers at this time. Yes, prevention. Prevention is better than cure, as they say. A question that comes from the U.S. Embassy in Lesotho. Hello, Lesotho. Thank you for being with us. What measures are being taken to stop the virus from spreading into countries where it has not been detected? I think within Africa one of the key measures has been limiting travel to countries where the virus hasn't been detected. So stopping, for example, with the Hajj that was happening, they didn't allow the issuance of visas to people from West Africa, which I guess makes maybe a little bit more sense than it does in countries like the U.S. where there are so few, there's a very limited number of travelers, but there are a lot of people who are going over there for support and the relief effort. So I know that's one of the key things that's being done. I'm also preparing surveillance networks, so the strengthening of disease surveillance networks in countries where information is disseminated of, you know, if you do have a virus, like there are reportable diseases that governments keep an eye on, and Ebola is one of them, and I understand that in countries that haven't had an outbreak there are precautions being taken about making sure that they're ready if a virus is tested positive to disseminate that information and have people on the ground who are ready to go out and start what's called contact tracing, which I'm sure many of the reporters are very familiar with by now, and that's just tracing the contacts of a positive case and making sure, following up with them very regularly to see whether they develop symptoms of the virus, and if they do, isolating them before the chain of transmission continues. Now a really important question that's just come in from Metro TV Ghana. Unfortunately I don't have the name of the reporter. Thank you so much for doing your job and asking a very pertinent question. Julia, here it is. How should journalists treat herbalists who claim to have cures? So I think that there are two approaches. One, don't report on them at all. If you know that well first I guess clearly we don't have any treatment or cure yet unfortunately. So there's a very good chance that unless this person is somehow harboring a miraculous drug that does curibola, that it's just someone who's exploiting the fear that has been spread by this epidemic. So I would take either don't report on it at all or report on it in a very skeptical critical way, just completely debunking the claim that they're making and telling your, if it's something that you think the public is aware of and is kind of starting to think about and talk about, use your role as a reporter to bring the science to bear, to bring independent voices who can shed some critical light on whatever claims that are being made to bring those to bear through your reporting. So I think one of those two approaches depending on how much public interest there is in whatever care is being or whatever herbal medicine is being talked about. That sounds like very sound advice. Another question from Lisoto, how would a dentist link poverty with the spread of the disease if there is any connection? Benedict, I didn't hear the first part. How would journalists link poverty? Link poverty, yes, with the spread of the Ebola virus if there's any connection? One of the first stories we wrote at Vox about this epidemic was explaining the economic context of these three countries that have been affected by the virus so explaining, you know, what does the GDP look like, what does the literacy rate look like, how many doctors per capita do they have, how many hospitals do they have, how many Ebola specialists do they have and then giving some context to that by comparing these countries to other countries in Africa and other countries around the world and I think when you do that, when you show the readers the data, when you show them those numbers, it becomes very clear that unfortunately this is a disease of poverty. We saw one story that came out of this epidemic was that, you know, in Africa the death rate for Ebola has been about 70% during this epidemic. In America 70% of people who have had or more than 70% of people I guess more than America, sorry in America and Europe, so in the west more than 70% of people who have had this virus have survived, so that's a complete inverse and we wrote a story on, you know, why are Americans who get this disease surviving while we're seeing such a staggering death rate in Africa and we talked to doctors who were on the ground working in Africa about what they were seeing and they were talking about poor sanitation, they were talking about the fact that people on the job were scared for their lives, like nurses were leaving hospitals because they didn't have protective gear that they needed to do their job safely. Doctors were rationing gloves there was such a low doctor to population ratio and when you can get those kinds of details, like, you know that really brings this contrast to light and it becomes very clear that this really unfortunately is a disease of poverty that's taken off in countries that just don't have the resources and infrastructure to handle and the preparedness to handle this outbreak. So what you're saying is that it is perfectly legitimate for a journalist to make that link if he or she sees that first-hand. I think so, yeah. Another question from this time from Akra, to report on the facts about Ebola you may have to report on misconceptions first. So how should journalists go about this in order not to create a panic? So it's a really fine line, like how do you sometimes I felt like the more we were telling people don't worry, calm down the more the public panic was kind of being stoked. I think one way to do it is to communicate uncertainty to people to say that, you know there's just about I think so one place where things really went awry in the U.S. was when we had the public health officials saying there's no way this virus is really difficult to get and then we had a case of a Liberian national who came to the U.S. with Ebola and he transmitted the virus to two of his nurses so there was this real skepticism in the public of if this is so hard to get how did these nurses actually get the virus. And he used it as an opportunity again to talk about the science of the virus so it actually made perfect sense that two nurses he did transmit the virus to two nurses but this was at the end of his life when he had the most virus in his body when he was absolutely contagious shedding so much of the virus and the people who were around him were working with him at that time in his life were exposed and got the virus but in contrast to that he was very symptomatic he was living in a small apartment in Dallas with his fiancee with her children and he didn't transmit the virus to them and so we used that contrast to talk about actually this is a perfect example of what we know about the science of Ebola and how it's transmitted and yes the two nurses did get the virus but don't forget that just days before he was admitted to hospital he was in this tiny apartment and they didn't get the virus so using those kinds of stories to turn them on their head a little bit and again bring the science to light for people and be honest also about the uncertainty be clear that we're still learning about this virus until this year it only turned up in very limited populations and there are things that we're still learning and being honest about that I think three-year reporting is important too and probably only builds public trust. Two more questions briefly from Khartoum so thank you Khartoum you mentioned Julia Cure's vaccines and you quoted an article with a Secret Serum we've heard says the journalist in Khartoum that a US company has discovered in an Ebola drug do you know whether this is accurate and if so is there a date for this drug to reach the African continent and then a related question Julia can condoms this is really important one can condoms prevent the spread of Ebola you might want to start with the last one can condoms prevent the spread of Ebola yeah I think so on the condom question I know that survivors are told to just abstain from sex for the I think a three-month period after their recovery so I'm assuming that there might be some uncertainty about whether you know Ebola can be spread through sexual intercourse during that time and so maybe I don't know whether they've done testing on whether condoms can prevent the spread of Ebola in the same way can prevent the spread of HIV and so I'd probably lean on if you're communicating this message to the public going with the World Health Organization and what the CDC are recommending which I believe is abstinence and on the question about the drugs so as far as I know very much in the clinical trials phase I know that the GlaxoSmithKline vaccine candidate just passed the first clinical trials phase in humans just for safety so nothing about efficacy but in a small number of people here that were tested in Bethesda Maryland the drug or the vaccine was shown to be safe and now early on in the epidemic the WHO authorized the testing of experimental treatments in Africa which are just starting up or getting going now or in the new year so as far as I know we're nowhere near drug approvals for any of these GlaxoSmithKline has started manufacturing the vaccine in the event that it ends up being efficacious but that's probably the furthest furthest along of any of the vaccine or treatment candidates that we have now and time waiters for no man or no woman so here's the last question Rain Bo Winsid from Johannesburg says I don't see anyone talking about one of the most interesting things about this epidemic 16,000 infected 9,000 survived can you comment Julia? That's such a good point I think that there have been survival stories we've run a couple of talks I've read there have been many different media outlets but the fact that people do survive I think there was this you know books like The Hot Zone and the movie Outbreak I don't know how popular they've been in Africa but they were these early depictions of Ebola as this absolutely deadly virus as something that caused you know biblical hemorrhaging in all of the victims of Ebola and that the death rate was just so high that it killed almost 100% of its victims now of course we know that this isn't true maybe this is what scientists believed at the time in the early 90s when these when the book and the movie came out but we know that many people survive Ebola that they go on to lead normal lives we know that only a minority of patients actually ever bleed so you know actually reflecting that through the stories that you're finding and not just going with these preconceived notions about this disease is really important I think some media outlets have done a good job of capturing those stories and also the hardship of survivors so people who survived the epidemic are often ostracized by their or survived the virus sorry they're often ostracized by their communities they have a tough time reintegrating people are still afraid of them and they tell those stories and to help at least the readers understand that these people aren't infectious anymore after they've recovered and you know giving again that human interest element to what you point out is an absolutely staggering statistic I think is really important Julia Beluth from vox.com thank you very much for your presentation also for answering all these questions in a really simple way for sharing the lessons that can be learned to improve reporting on Ebola and any other pandemic so that concludes our three experts presentations of this virtual Ebola reporting workshop in English thank you to all three speakers Martin Ensering Jonathan Hamilton, Julia Beluth thank you also to Doug France assistant secretary of state for public affairs Dr. W. Rudley Archer from the US center for disease control and prevention thank you also to Jeremy Connendike director of the office of US foreign disaster assistance the US agency for international development thank you for a really informative interactive session I hope you all been inspired by what you've heard during this training session thank you of course a big thank you also thank you to the US state department also to the WFSJ the world federation of science journalists who coordinated this program thank you for you in Washington the digital team who helped keep us on air thank you for your magic work there and finally thank you so much to you for watching in Africa all around Africa and all over the world so this is Billy Dick Paveo live from London thanking you asking you to stay and be well informed to be skeptical also to contextualize to remember Ebola and other health pandemics affect human beings people they're not just numbers they're not numbers they are human communities around the world and that has a huge impact and we have a big responsibility that we need to honor so be safe get local knowledge and be well good reporting hope you've been inspired