 Downing. Well good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here to say sorry we're a little bit late we like to pride ourselves in our timing. We take this very badly indeed. We will finish at three o'clock precisely so we're going to try to wrap as much into this issue briefing as possible. The issue briefing is on Ebola learning from the crisis looking at what are the lessons that have been learned mapping out the gaps that allowed the Ebola crisis to become such a devastating impact economically more important to the humanly in the past few months. We've got a panel of multi-stakeholder leaders on the subject. Arno Bernard, senior director, head of global health and health care industries at the World Economic Forum. Second on my left, Paul Paulman, chief executive officer of Unilever and a co-chair of this meeting. I'm very pleased to have Isabella Living, Minister for International Development Corporation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sweden, who also has a personal aspect to her involvement and interest in this subject. She's indeed lived in Liberia in Sierra Leone. I'm just going to ask Arno first just to give us an overview because at the forum, Arno, you've been leading a study to map out the gaps that have led to the Ebola crisis in the first place. Absolutely, and thanks a lot. Actually, a lot of our credit goes to our partners. This is in Davos this year that we had a high profile session with more than 20 companies, members of the forum, partnership communities. Actually, Paul was leading the charge together with Jim Kim from the World Bank. This is where he asked us to actually put together, that group asked us to put together a lesson-slern story with a sole focus on the role of the private sector. So, just to be clear, our focus has not been into looking at governance mechanisms, the role of WHO, the role of the UN, how they should work with the NGOs. It has been really about understanding from the review of 200 interventions from the private sector from donation and contribution in kind in excess of half a billion dollar for innovation expenses in the field of vaccine innovation and drugs, probably to the tune of an over half a billion dollar. Understanding from those interventions what did work well, what can we learn and how can we build further. This report will launch today. It has been supported by the Boston Consulting Group. It's a very, very good report. It draws into the role of three different types of potential stakeholders, local operators, global specialist companies, or simply those companies that are doing good out of corporate social responsibility. For the three different types of companies, there are certain recommendations, I should say, called for action that we are willing to follow up upon and we are very committed, like it was discussed in the public session just before this media briefing, to engage with three or four countries with a number of partners to actually move on this call to action to the execution mode. I'd like to ask you a little bit about your thoughts on that. Why and to what degree the private sector should be involved in this, but also you've just come from a session on this subject. Perhaps you could shed some light on whether anything, any action or any commitment has been catalyzed so far here in Cape Town. Well the private sector is as much part of society as anybody else and obviously what you see is when there's a crisis like this and the Ebola crisis, which by the way 11,000 people lost, innocent people lost unnecessarily their lives, 25,000 cases detected, it was a major wake-up call for the world. The first instance for business is that your business stops, you know, your people can't travel there, your production facilities will be closed, that is a very obvious thing why business is interested. The second thing is that these countries suffer economically so much that these markets disappear. There's another reason why business would be interested if you don't believe in the humanitarian part. And the third part is always an opportunity. Many of the solutions that need to come in these markets need to come with technology and innovation, who is going to provide the medicines that need to be developed, who is going to give you the solutions on habit chains or the material of protective gear and all that. And this is where companies are at their best, that they can actually contribute sometimes their knowledge, know-how, sometimes their funds and sometimes their products. And that is why you see a lot of companies involved. It's not surprising that when the Ebola crisis broke out, very quickly about 150 companies donated a total of about half a billion dollars. But at the same time, these companies very quickly understood that it's very difficult to get this effectiveness of that money or the accountability of that money in a way it's being spent up to its highest levels. But what we did not to get into my own company but what we discovered that the preparedness was lacking, was when plans ready. Normally you have a plan in your drawer and you can all align on what you do and that was not the case here. So an absence of plans, an absence of clear understanding of what was going on, a lack of data and obviously nobody had ever worked together. You didn't have these public-private partnerships so there was a lack of trust. And this report actually from Boston Consulting Group that we asked them to do is a very good summary of all the learnings having done a lot of interviews with many people. So I won't take any time on that one. And I recommend you read it. But out of this came the conclusion that we all need to sit together now when things have cooled down a little bit and say what can we do to be a little bit better prepared in the future? There are four different types of disasters that we looked at. The one is obviously this year coming out of the Ebola with other pandemics, which are the major health risks and they're only going to increase in this interdependent world. The other one we looked at was what do we do with social or political upheaval that also sometimes needs attention. The third one is natural disasters. Increasingly the effects of climate change are apparent all across the world and you get natural disasters. And the fourth one is the one of things like in Nepal that you just saw. And how do we prepare for each of these cases more proactively so that we can get better results and save a lot of innocent lives? Very simple. Now the next step is with obviously the work that the web is leading as a coordinator with many of the international institutions and governments, government of Sweden and many others. How can we bring the people together now? Very practically to start drawing on these learnings, put plans together now in three or four countries that give us learnings on how we can have better prevention, better preparedness, better response and better rehabilitation. And hopefully with these plans that we pulled together in three or four countries, Mali just volunteered in the panel that we were in and one or two other countries stepped forward. Can we start there in the next six to nine months? Prepare something that makes more sense and then see if we can scale it to have the world prepare better. And on top of that, you need to think about some more sustainable things that countries need to put together in terms of health care, insurances that start to put things in place that obviously reduce the incurrence. If every country has the best hospitals in the world and the facilities to deal with it, then with the next pandemic, then obviously you're better equipped than if anything has to be shipped in. You understand that. So we're looking at these mechanisms and no better year to do this in the year that we have to all agree on the sustainable development goals because at the end of the day, it really boils down to the sustainable development goals and the opportunity to eradicate poverty once and for all. Minister Living, how has the crisis informed your overseas development policies? And do you think we're getting any closer to a successful working model for public private cooperation in this space? Thank you very much. First of all, I need to correct your introduction. I haven't lived in Liberia or Sierra Leone, however, Sweden is a very long-standing partner with Liberia. We have a development corporation there for more than 30 years with the second biggest donor after the US with Liberia. And I visited the two countries right after I became a minister. And not, well, I can say like this, the first thing that really landed on my table when I became a new development corporation minister was the Ebola crisis. The UN Secretary General, President Obama, the World Bank President, everyone kind of were calling around in September saying that this is going to be a global security crisis. The Ebola virus is going to spread and the predictions were really, really frightening that with the exponential increase, we would have seen more than, I don't remember the exact figures now, but I mean, there were really scary figures around a million or something in January. So we all had to act very, very quickly. And so we, Sweden, we stepped up and did whatever we could in the beginning. We've allocated 67 million US dollars so far to the fight against Ebola. However, I also, my conclusions are now looking in the back mirror and after my visits to the countries, it wasn't only a question about lack of money or resources, kind of material resources, but it wasn't really a coincidence that the Ebola virus spread in these three countries and was stopped in DRC and was stopped in Nigeria and in Mali. The lack of institutional capacity was the difference in these three countries. So also the trust between the population and its governments was a really decisive factor that people did not listen to the information they got. They had no trust in actually handing over their sick relatives and loved ones when they didn't even, I mean, many people can't read and write and there was a real distrust on the information that they got. And the only information that they understood was that people that were taken in were never returned and they couldn't even do the traditional way of taking care of the dead ones and the burials and all of that. So it revealed that the Ebola crisis in these countries actually revealed the real weaknesses, institutional weaknesses and governance weaknesses in these countries. So I think also what has been the decisive factor in Liberia when the epidemic was really fought was when the community leaders took the responsibility on providing the information and really then the whole community started working and trusting the information and doing what was best. And that was a little bit after the international community just set up all these Ebola units that have not all been fully utilised. So there's been a mismatch in many ways and I fully understand when the private sector, Mr Pullman, is saying that there was lack of understanding and how can we actually contribute, how can we pool the funding and channel the funding in the best way. So I think the major lessons learned for us is better coordination on the international level between the organisations, of course, also using the private sector and being prepared the next time on how we can actually use and utilise the resources that the private sector can establish, but also between the international organisations and the states because there was a lack of coordination there. But now with long-term development cooperation, I think we need to look a lot more on state building and institution building and not kind of only look in stovepipes where we can go in and strengthen the health sector but rather look at all the factors that build strong resilient societies and inclusive societies. And this was one of the big fragilities in these states that really led to the epidemic to spread. Thank you. I do hate to not give you the chance to ask one question before we close this session. Lady at the back there. Good afternoon. Yeah, we can hear you. I just want to find out if there has been latest quantifying of how much the impact of this has had on the economy of those countries, if there has been any new figures specifically on the informal trading sector of those areas. And if the World Bank is sufficient that this is enough money, is there more money that is needed and has there been money put aside to try and if the informal sector has indeed been affected, if there is talks of trying to resuscitate maybe the businesses in these countries that have been affected? We don't have the World Bank here. Would anybody like to tackle that one? In places like Liberia and Mali has been devastating. You know, people have, I've seen different numbers, so I don't know if it's easy to calculate, but 10, 15% of the economy easily. By the way, that's the equivalent to what these economies lose because of the issue of stunting with children, for example. So these are big numbers. I was in Nigeria. I went there right away to show the support of the business community when everybody was sort of saying we need to go out of the country. So we went to Abuja. We had actually the web in Abuja at that time as well, the World Economic Forum. And Goshi, who was the finance minister, was calculating that these were just six cases, I remember, six or eight cases that came in into Nigeria, was about between half and 1% of the Nigerian economy. Now these are big numbers if you look at it by any standard. What is very clear is, and Liberia is a good example, was Mrs Surleaf, that everybody really wants that to succeed. So there is an over-investment, I would say, from certainly the Governments, but also from the private sector, to make these countries work. One of the initiatives we discussed yesterday was around sustainable sourcing, sustainable forestry. And again, all the time Liberia comes up as a country you need to help, because the cost of failure are far higher than the cost for the country. It's the cost for the world. The main issues that you see in the world on security and related issues are our failures to deal with the issue of poverty. That's why you have to have the Boko Haram, all the Shababs and all the other groups. So you have to invest in these countries. Mrs Surleaf gave me one number that was stunning when I was there in Monrofian. He said 57% of the population is below 15 years old. That's the number I remember. But that's stunning. So if that is the case, I was sitting next to the Minister of Agriculture. He's the only person who went to the University of Wisconsin in Medicine, that's why she had to come back. But she had no capabilities. How can we help these people? Because it's in all of our interest. It's in humanity's interest. But it's also in the interest of peace and prosperity for the total world. So these costs are enormous well beyond the country itself, if that answers your question. We do have to close now. We have to keep on schedule for this one. I do encourage you to try to grab a few words with speakers as we leave. Minister, I believe you have to leave if you feel you need to. I have a shared question. For about insurance. The World Bank actually should be here, Bertrand. I had to leave for another meeting. But the group of insurance companies is already meeting also with the World Bank to see what financing mechanisms and incentives need to be put in place to create a broader insurance scheme which would then help countries to draw from that much quicker than otherwise would happen. Now lots of these funds took time and negotiations and all that. Here you would have immediate access just like our own insurance schemes. These things, he was just updating me on that coming out of the panel. These things are rapidly moving forward and the insurance industry together with these financial institutions are putting something out there in six or nine months. What this is more is a little bit, a step that goes a little bit further, where hopefully with the help of some country, donor countries, we can bring a group of people together, multi-sectorial, that can work with three or four countries, very practical, nothing sexy here, three or four countries to draw on the learnings of this report and to say how could we organize based on these learnings to prevent this? Can we bring the right private sector together? Can we bring the local communities together? Can we bring the governments together? Can we do that with the international donor community and get some learnings? If this would happen again, Mali just volunteered, I'm sure, with your passion and all of ours for Liberia and we take two or three countries very practically, do that in the next nine to 12 months, produce another learning. This is learnings from what we learned from the crisis but not the solutions on how we prevent it in the future. But we should be able to produce in the next 12 to 18 months, if I may be conservative, recommendations on how can we be more proactive and including the private sector, which obviously I represent, but I think you would probably say the same thing from where you're sitting. The need for a build-up in these countries is really, really big and I think we agree that what you were saying that education and also addressing the economic growth and the needs of the young people, the young generation in these countries, that's really something that we need to address in order to prevent future crisis. So it's not only a health crisis. I think it was really interesting, the finance minister from Sierra Leone, he said to me that before the Ebola crisis we saw Sierra Leone, all the figures were going up. The economic figures were going up. The investors were coming in. We were really believing that we were on the right track and then Ebola hit and investors left the country and the economy just went down. So this is really showing that it's not enough only with economic investments, but you also need to look at the broad set of the society and education, not least. Thank you very much. This session is now closed. Thank you all for joining us.