 Hello, and welcome to this virtual Ebola reporting workshop in English. This is Benedique Pavillot, live from London. Thank you to all the participating posts who are hosting watch parties at US embassies and consulates. Welcome also to all my fellow journalists who are joining us to improve your reporting on Ebola. Thank you for agreeing to take part in what we hope will be a very informative, productive, fruitful and certainly interactive training session. So this training course is actually coordinated by the WSFJ, the World Federation of Science Journalists, and organized by the US Department of State. So thank you to both of them. Now, in a moment, our first of three experts is going to join us. But first, I'd like to thank you, all of you who are joining us today. You are very many around Africa, also elsewhere in the world. You're in Nigeria, Lesotho, Sudan, Ghana, Kenya, and the list goes on. Tanzania, Botswana, you're in Johannesburg, South Africa, in Sierra Leone, in Zimbabwe, in Uganda. And that's just for the moment the US embassies and consulates. But you're also joining us individually from all over Africa and all over the world. So welcome to this really special training session live, as I said, from London. So it's divided in three sessions. In a moment, we're going to have the first of our three experts joining us. Really, the first thing I want to say is that we're witnessing the worst single Ebola outbreak in history. The outbreak has been running all through 2014 in West Africa. So we really need to know how we can improve the impact of your reporting on Ebola throughout the continent and also throughout the world. So our first expert joining us from Amsterdam is Martin Ensering. Martin Ensering, thank you very much indeed for joining us. Just before I ask you to start your presentation, I should say that you coordinate most of Science magazine's European news as a contributing editor. You also edit and write stories about infectious diseases, global health and research policy. You're fascinated by emerging diseases. And importantly, you've covered outbreaks on four continents, including the global outbreak of SARS in 2003 and the 2009 H1N1 influenza. So please start your talk now. That is entitled, Best Practices for Health Journalism and How to Find Data. Martin, over to you in Amsterdam. Thank you, Benedict, and hi, everybody. I'm thrilled to be in this workshop. I really look forward to it. I think it's a very good time to do this because the Ebola epidemic is a terrible challenge and we as journalists can do something to make it slightly better. Can you start my PowerPoint presentation, please? All right, so I'm going to talk to about 15 minutes. As Benedict said, we hope that this will be an interactive workshop. You can send in your questions by email and we will have space at the end to talk about them. We can even if it's a quick question that Benedict can interrupt me during the talk if there's something that needs to be cleared up right away. I'm starting my talk. Just a little bit about me. I work for Science, which is an American magazine that's headquartered in Washington, DC. It covers all fields of science, basically. Myself, as Benedict said, I'm based in Amsterdam, which is in the Netherlands. I specialize in infectious diseases and science policy. We're talking about Ebola today. Like Benedict said, I've been covering disease outbreaks for a long time. I've written for Ebola at least 12 years. This was a story that I did in 2003. As you can see, researchers back then were very excited about new research showing that there were vaccines and drugs in development. We now know that 11 years later there's still no effective vaccine or drug against Ebola. That tells us something about the problems that we have and about the pace that the research has moved the past 11 years. I'm going to go to the next slide. We have less than an hour, so I'm going to stick to a few very basic points. I can't tell you everything that I would like to share with you. I know that there are very many general journalists in the audience, also keeping it fairly basic. I won't go into a lot of detail about research and about the science, but I'm trying to make it helpful tips that any reporter can use. When we're writing or reporting on Ebola or any disease in general, you have an important responsibility, obviously. What we report can have a real impact. If we report about drugs, we can create hope that there will be a solution. If we report about how to prevent the disease, we can actually save lives. If people read our stories, they can realize not to do certain things or to do other things to keep themselves safe. I want to stress that it's a real responsibility that we have when we report about diseases. By the way, I'm going to make my talk focused on Ebola, but really a lot of this applies to any disease. I hope it's useful for other diseases that you may cover as well for other outbreaks. Given this responsibility, what should we do? I want to stress really three points in this talk, three things that I think are important. First of all, it's being well informed when you cover other diseases. In this case, Ebola. Make sure you know a lot about it. Make sure you have the right sources. Second is, use a healthy dose of skepticism. Don't believe everything you hear. Try to examine what you're being told. Try to find the right people who can tell you really how things really are, because especially in an outbreak like this, there's a lot of panic, there's anxiety, there's politics involved. You really need to make an effort, I think, to treat everything with a dose of skepticism and really look for the story behind the story. And my third point that I'm going to make is be safe. And that, of course, is especially important with Ebola. In fact, I think it's so important that I'm going to start with it. Be safe. When you report about Ebola in an area where the virus actually occurs, what do you do? Because I know, I certainly have friends in journalism who would be afraid to go to Liberia or Sierra Leone now because of the infection. It is a big concern. I asked the World Health Organization what you've reported us to who traveled to one of these countries. They said it's very simple. Don't touch visibly sick people or the bodies of disease persons. That's all, that's what WHO says. So only people who are really sick, who are sick, who have symptoms or people who have died from Ebola are infectious. That's the most important rule. And if you avoid them, you'll generally be safe. Now, I know from reporters who've actually traveled to these areas that they've taken additional measures, even though they're not recommended by WHO, such as always try to avoid physical contact, not just with patients, but just in general right now in affected countries, affected by Ebola, people are shaking hands less, not hugging as much, et cetera. People also disinfect their hands frequently, for example, chlorine, they wear boots that they can disinfect. So there are some additional things you can do to be extra safe. But again, the first rule really covers it, I think. And then lastly, if you do think you may have been in touch with the virus or if you may have symptoms, of course you should immediately get medical attention, go to a doctor, tell them what happened and for the time being, avoid contact with other people. I think that speaks for itself. The last thing you want to do is to infect other people. I should stress with all of this that in 40 years of Ebola outbreaks, I don't think any reporter until recently has become infected. A few months ago there was an NBC camera man from the United States who got Ebola. I think he was the first reporter ever to get the disease. And for sure, I think whether he got it during his job or outside of the job. So the risk of covering Ebola doesn't seem to be all that great. So you need, obviously, to take care. All right, I'm going to my other points. Being well informed. When you're writing about health, about the disease, you're going to ask all kinds of questions. There's lots of things you can write about and you can cover. What causes this disease? Is it a virus? Is it a bacterium? Maybe a parasite? For instance, is it malaria? Or what are the symptoms? People die from it. How does it spread? Are animals involved? Is it immune to immune contact? Does it spread easily or very slowly? How many people does it affect? Does it affect older people, children, migrant workers, sex workers? Diseases often have a very different way of spreading and thus they target different people. That's important to find out. What can we do to control it? Are there drugs and vaccines maybe that can fight it? Or are they in development? And who's doing the control effort? Are they doing the control effort? Those are all questions you can ask in your reporting. The question, of course, is where are you going to go to to find the answers? Now, that's often quite difficult, especially if you're not used to reporting about health. You may have trouble finding the right source. So where will you find information? One of these places is just to go to the government and to ask them what's happening. As one example from the current outbreak in Liberia, this is the website of the Liberian Ministry of Health, they put out frequent situation reports on the Ebola epidemic, which is very useful because there are numbers that you want to know when to report. They break it down by counting. You can see what happened in the last week or in the last two months. You can see where the disease is most active. That's all very useful information. Of course, you can also call the ministry or ask the officials for more information. In Sierra Leone, for instance, I think this is great. The government is holding a teleconference where you can ask the chief medical officer of the health ministry questions. Obviously, there's a lot of questions to ask. So something like this is really good to participate in, I think. So there is information from the government. It's not always as good in one country as it can be in the other. There's always differences, but it's an important route of information, I think, to follow. Martin, a quick question from Benidic here. What happens if, for example, unlike you stated the example to follow in Sierra Leone, a government is not very forthcoming with the figures? What should a journalist do then? I think they should try to find out information for other ways. I'll name a couple of examples. In fact, the next one is a very good one, I think. It's a World Health Organization. It's a UN organization headquartered in Geneva. Again, going first through the case of Ebola, this is the World Health Organization's main page. They have a special page about Ebola. There's tons and tons of information here about the symptoms, about travel advice, about what to do if you want to go to one of these countries. There's information about vaccines, drugs. It's a very useful website, a very useful resource if you want to report on Ebola. There may be answers here that you cannot get from your own government, for instance. This is just one example. If you want to know what exactly are the symptoms of Ebola and what is the incubation period, you'll find it on this website. Usually, between once and twice a week, they'll send out a situation report which really has a lot of information about how many new cases there have been, what the total number of cases is. It breaks it down the country. It also breaks it down by confirmed probable and suspected Ebola cases. Those numbers are important to keep an eye on, although, of course, they don't tell the whole story. But these situation reports also have additional information about specifics about each country. And then, again, WHO also has a virtual press conference where you can call to a number in Geneva if you can make that connection. I realize not everybody can, and there are phone charges. But those press briefings are really useful and a lot of questions get answered there. And that is just Ebola. But the World Health Organization site is really an incredible resource for information about a lot of different diseases. For instance, state malaria, they put out an annual report every year that basically covers the whole situation in the whole world around malaria. It's a very useful report if you want to read up on the disease. And it also has... Can I jump in for just one moment because what's important is... Thank you. We're talking about Ebola today, but, of course, what we want journalists to improve on is all of the reporting for any pandemic, any infectious disease that could happen tomorrow. So let's just underline that if I may from the beginning of this reporting workshop. Thank you. Absolutely. Yes. That's one reason I'm calling up this example of malaria, which is, as we all know, a big problem in Africa. In other words, the World Malaria Report also has information per country. So if you look up your own country, you see, well, how are we doing? Are we doing better than the neighbors? How many people here are in bed nets? How many people have access to drugs? All that kind of information you can find in this malaria report. So this is only one example in the Middle East. And this is true for almost any disease that affects Africa. You can find a lot of information on the WHO website. So go there. And also, get on their press list so that you get their email. You can get up to date. And if you're on Twitter, do follow them. Now, WHO is a global organization, but it also has regional offices. There's one in Brazil, which is the WHO Africa office. They do provide information. Sometimes it overlaps with what comes out of Geneva. Definitely also good to keep an eye on and to contact. And there are press offices there. And you should use them. If you have a question, do email them or call them. And if they don't answer, because sometimes they're too busy and they don't answer, then start nagging them. So this email yesterday, would you mind responding? They're there for us for journeys. So we should use them as a source of information. Can I tell you our first question? I'm so sorry to interrupt. Thank you so much for being so interactive. That really is very good. Our first question actually comes Martin from Accra. So hello Accra. And it's what should be the message that should be put out for the public in regards to treating Ebola? Can Ebola be treated or cured? This is because many messages put out earlier say Ebola cannot be cured. And this is why many people refuse to get medical attention. Well, I think that's an excellent question and a really vital one. So the situation is there is no specific cure for Ebola. There is no drug that will cure the disease. But if you get very good medical care, if you go to a treatment center, you have a better chance of surviving. So I think it's important to stress the message that no, there is no cure for Ebola or something that you can just take to get better. But if you're under the care of good doctors and nurses, you will benefit because you have a higher chance of survival. You know, we've all seen these survival or these fatality rates, the mortality rates from Ebola in the past outbreaks, they have been up to 90%. But there have been some Ebola treatment units right now in West Africa that have been much more successful. Instead of saving just 10%, they've saved more than half of all the people that came in. So in other words, if you seek medical care, I really think it's an important message to tell the public that you will have a better shot at surviving Ebola. One more background or are at it? Is it ethical to disclose the identity of an infected person or family to prevent unnecessary stigmatization? I think that's a very difficult question. I think you always have to be very careful revealing personal information about Ebola patients. This is an issue in every outbreak. It's also an issue in Western countries versus the US patients that have Ebola have also been named by the press that has been an invasion of their privacy and that can cause stigmatization sometimes. So I think journalists should be very reluctant to publish that information. I think we should respect patients' privacy. That's an important message. Thank you and I'm going to let you continue. Okay, thank you. So press officers, they're important. I'm going to go quickly to another couple of sources for information. One that I find really useful is called Cormat. It's basically an email list, but it's also a website, and it collects all the information about disease outbreaks in the world. You have a list here from the last couple of days. It's an equine influenza disease in Scotland. It's a blue-toned disease in Europe. It's bird flu in Germany. There's a lot of messages here about Ebola, and basically they collect everything. They have press reports, official reports from the ministries, reports from WHO. So if you want to stay up to date on a single disease or just want to keep an eye on all outbreaks around the world, Cormat is a very good source. I recommend following it, especially if you're reporting more on health and if you want to sort of stay abreast of what's happening in the world. Then there's obviously the NGO of organizations like Metsens on Frontier. Very important in this battle, others as well. They're, I think, very good sources of information. Then there are independent experts, scientists, academics at universities, other people who are knowledgeable about the disease that you're writing about. I'm going to talk a little bit more about this later, so I'm putting it off. And the last, of course, is patients and their families. I think it's usually important to try to get the full picture also to describe what a disease, in this case, Ebola is doing to a community. You should talk to the patients and to the families. One story that did this really well, I thought, I love this story in the New York Times when we had trouble pronouncing his name, but his name is Nori Mitzi Onishi. He did an incredible story about how Ebola tore apart and really destroyed a big Liberian family, and he traced it all the way back to where the disease came from and became infected and distrusted, created. I thought a really nice example of reporting about the disease's impact. I also mentioned stigma, which we'll just talk about. Can you just address very briefly, Martin, would you mind? It just does not only have a health impact, which is an obvious one, but also a sociocultural impact and, of course, a very tough economic impact, as fewer people, for example, are going on holiday to Africa and to countries that are known to have been hit by Ebola, but also countries who have not yet been hit by Ebola. Absolutely, you're completely right. And, for instance, the World Bank has issued reports on the economic impact of other organizations that have looked at this as well. That's also obviously a hugely important aspect to report about. And so this list is by no means exhaustive. This doesn't mention it all. There's much more you can do. My basic message is try to cancel the wide net. Don't stick to just the government. Don't only follow WHO or that one scientist that you know and that you trust. Do talk to as many people as possible, and I think you'll have the best reports. Okay. Shall I go on? Please do. The second big message, which is really the last because I did the third already, is a little bit skeptical. Now, I don't mean you can't believe anything you hear, but I think in general what we all know as journalists, we have to have a healthy dose of skepticism. We have to look at information and say, this is really true. We try to find that out. I'll give you one example. This was a story that I found from Liberia about two developed patients who died of the virus and then were reportedly resurrected. Now, I think we all agree that that is very unlikely to be true. And so that shows you why you need to be skeptical. This is not a report that I think can be trusted. But sometimes it gets more complicated and it's hard to figure out what is true and what isn't. Take this example, which I think became quite a big story in Nigeria. There were reports that there was this Ebola drug called nano silver. And it was reportedly discovered in the United States. And a Nigerian scientist who I think hasn't been named but wanted to get this drug to Nigeria to help in the Ebola outbreak. And the health minister said, okay, this drug is coming. And according to the news reports I've read, I haven't confirmed this, but the news story said, he said we're going to test it on AIDS Ebola patients. But what is nano silver? Where did it come from? Why was it all of a sudden a candidate drug along with other drugs like Z-map, for instance, which has been used to treat some American patients? A strange story. This woman, Dr. Leibov, is behind it. She's an American. She has this website where she sells a lot of different health-related products, food supplements, etc. And she also sells nano silver. And she claimed it had a lot of really amazing abilities. She said, call it definitive prevention and therapy for Ebola virus. She says it inhibits every disease organism it has ever been tested against without exception. And she said it's the world's only hope against Ebola. And so it seemed that this drug was going to be used in Nigeria because the health minister said so. But actually none of that is true. This drug has not been tested against Ebola as far as we can tell because it's never anything has been published about it. The US Food and Drug Administration actually sent this doctor who sells a warning letter, basically saying selling this is a drug but it has not been proven. To be a drug is no data whatsoever that it works. And you can't do this. You have to stop. Basically they told her to stop marketing this stuff and to stop making claims about it that it can treat Ebola because that has not been shown. And the FDA also warned consumers to fall for these fraudulent Ebola treatment products because they have not been shown to work, not in animals, not in humans. So there is no substance to these claims. So subsequently I understand that in Nigeria this plan to actually test nano-silver was abandoned. I don't think it actually happened. So I think that shows you that first of all you need to be skeptical but it's also hard to be skeptical because if the government says we're going to test this then how do you know that it may not work or that there's no evidence to support that it will work? Well that's really where the question then becomes how do you find the real experts? How do you find people who can actually tell you, you know, this is stuff or what is it that this is? So what are we doing wrong? How do you find the people who can really inform you on a deeper level about what's going on? That's always very difficult. But I have a couple of tips that I want to share with you. First of all ask people who they trust. If you know somebody that you can rely on who provides good information and knows the field that you're talking about ask them who else should I be talking to? Do you know somebody who knows a lot about this or that disease? Do you know somebody who knows about drug testing for Ebola? You can also go to established health and scientific organizations, hospitals, maybe national academies of science that exist in many African countries. And so if you have an expert on this, can you help me find more information independent from the government where I can check things, I can talk to people, I can send the material that I've found to read over, see what they think. Try to check out people's reputation. Ask them for this. Okay so this person says they're an expert. Did they ever publish about this topic? But it's in science and in a medical world. That's how you share your information with your colleagues by publishing and that's how you build up a reputation as an expert in somebody who knows something. So it's good to ask is this really a person who has shown that he knows a topic by publishing about it. And then it's very important that some people might have a conflict of interest. For instance in the case of nano silver that was clearly the case, the person who recommended that there was also selling it on the website. So that information had been verified by independent people. That's a very important issue. And finally also try to look beyond your own country. If there's a scientist in your country who has international credentials, I think that's usually more trustworthy than somebody who doesn't if they have international meetings or maybe they have a relationship with WHO. Those are all good signs. There are signs that you can talk to somebody and that they might actually know what they're talking about. And also don't just stick to... One can use email. You can use email. That's the beauty of the internet. Yes absolutely. With all the data and sources you've given us already. Yes, use email of course. And don't be afraid to email people outside your own country. Of course all news is local they say and I know that and you want to start with the people in your own country but why not email an American Ebola expert and ask them what do you think about how we're doing it or somebody in Europe or somebody from India. You don't have to limit yourself to the people you know from your own country. I'm not going to get very deeply into tech development but nano-silver case I think raised a lot of interest and it's important because we all hope that there will be drugs and vaccines against Ebola which as I said they don't currently exist during development. And I wanted to very briefly just a few minutes talk about how drugs are developed because it's a very, very long road in this very complex and you see it sort of in a little graphic summarized here. What you see on the left is three to six years of what they call drug discovery and pre-clinical work. That basically means you're looking for molecules that might do something against the virus. They're going to test them in the test tube in petri dishes or maybe in animals first usually in mice or other rogues and then they move to monkeys. That whole phase before it ever goes into a human can easily take five or six years. Then in the middle you go to clinical trials. That means we're going to test the drug in people and that is usually divided into three phases. Phase one phase two phase three and they have the number of people in each trial approach. So in phase one you really start with a small number of people maybe 20 maybe 50 and you look we're going to give them this drug. Is it safe? Do they have any side effects? If it's safe it moves to phase two and you have a bigger study you use more people and you look again is it safe in this larger group of people and you may also start to look does it work? Does it do what we design it for? Does it help against the disease? And then finally you go to a phase three trial in which you have a larger number of people sometimes thousands sometimes tens of thousands and it's really the efficacy trial. Is this drug helping? Is it doing what we design it to do? That whole stage is another six to seven years as you can see. It's a very long process. Then after that you go to the FDA if you're in the US but in other countries it's a national regulation authority. You get the green light to start putting it on the market and then you have to produce it in a large enough quantities to actually start selling and distributing it. So as you can see all of this can easily take ten years. Now, nanosilver as far as we know has not been through any of the phases. At least it hasn't been published and normally it goes into one of these phases and it comes out of it will be a paper that we study in a scientific journal that says we've tested it on so many people these are the outcomes. That as far as we know doesn't exist for nanosilver. So it is basically all the way to the left of this graphic. It's not even in there. The important thing about the drugs that are currently and the vaccines that are currently in development is the important thing to know is that they are all before even phase one. So the drugs and vaccines I wrote about 11 years ago they never really moved into the clinical trial phase into that green part in the middle. Now because development is such a terrible epidemic they are really rushing the drugs and the vaccines through that middle part in the clinical trials in the human studies. And the first vaccine is now out of phase one and it will soon go into phase two in the middle. But then it will and maybe they are even combining phase two and three into one study. So in Ebola it's really compressed the whole time schedule is compressed but you can see it takes a lot of time. So when somebody says I have something that works keep the schedule in mind. Keep in mind that drug development is really long. It's a really careful process because drugs have side effects as well and you don't want to give something to people that may actually harm them. You also don't want to give something that doesn't work at all because then we're spending money we're raising people's hopes. We want to know that the drug is safe and that it works and this process is designed to do that. That's a very important warning you're giving us journalists and very helpful to understand that process because there has been some reporting responsible reporting on the fact that some clinical trials are being rushed through but as you say it's important to know that there was this background in that blue those blue columns that you've got that they were actually already being looked at before. I understand that there are huge efforts going on in America in the United Kingdom also in Russia amongst some of the more serious trials and drugs that are being taken at the moment and rushed through. That's correct. But those products have already been through the animal studies and monkey studies and that already means if they survive that fate if they did well in those monkeys they already have a pretty good idea that they might work in humans. But drugs that haven't been in monkey studies they're far behind they're still in that preclinical stage. Anyway I just wanted to give this to you as a background so that you realize when we're talking about drugs it is a long and difficult process and there's lots of ethical issues involved as well. Okay. So those were my main points and I look forward to answering your questions. Martin, first thank you very much indeed for your presentation also the fact that you're so open to letting me interrupt you sometimes with questions either that are coming to us from the very many journalists watching us across the world. So here's a question from a remote user called Rainbow Incid in Johannesburg is Martin aware of the Media Foundation for West Africa's special reports on Ebola and freedom of expression and the additional dangers to journalists beyond infection? I'm not aware of that report, I'm sorry it sounds interesting I am aware that there have been that there are additional dangers beyond infection and that political sensitivities obviously Ebola is a political topic in several countries and people can get into trouble for politicizing the government's response but I don't know that particular report I look forward to reading. Alright well perhaps that particular remote user would be kind enough to give us a bit more information on that so that Martin can look into that. A very quick question from me I've become aware also of the fact that of course a lot of the healing practices that go on throughout various continents amongst them Africa obviously often involves the actual touching of the body but I understand from some of my sources that a lot of that healing can be done without actually touching the person that they're trying to heal is that right? You're right both in the healing procedure but also in of course in funerals in rituals and in burials that can be contact with the body of a deceased person that's very risky if it's an Ebola patient because their bodies are very infectious so it's very important if somebody has Ebola to avoid any physical contact so to what extent healing procedures can be done without any touching I don't know but I think in general if you have Ebola or if there's a suspicion of Ebola I think it's important to get tested and go to a treatment center to rule out Ebola if it's another disease and to be isolated and treated if it is Ebola so I think that's an important message to give to the audience if you have a suspicion of Ebola seek medical care and get tested My understanding is that there are particular arrangements that have been made and that do abide by the various different religious practices for example in the Muslim religion that there can just be a shroud put on the body that it doesn't have to be wrapped in it but would journalists please also refer to their local of course various religious or cultural sources to check on this but I think that's an important message that can help to avoid certainly not just during life of an Ebola struck patient or person but also actually until the time of burial that's an important message to get through that journalists can really serve a public health purpose and that's a very important to their big communicators so please as Martin was saying that's part of our responsibility to help to give those messages World Health Organization has issued documents about burials but safe burials and how you can reconcile them with traditional rituals. Clearly there is tension there and that is very painful for people because nobody likes to everybody wants to say farewell to their loved ones in a dignified way and in a sensitive way and that has to change if there is Ebola but there are ways that you can mitigate the impacts and I recommend that people read the WHO's guidance on this Great so please yes go to the WHO the World Health Organization's website to look at a lot of the data and amongst which what Martin's just referring to there about the practices concerning burials very important message to get across to your audiences here's a question Martin from Accra well done Accra you're getting your questions in and South Africa let's get some other countries in there if sources bureaucratic ones for instance are slow in responding to and you must report what should you do yeah that's a tough one and we all I think every journalist can relate to that question when your sources and especially bureaucracies for sure don't answer your email and to be honest I've had trouble sometimes getting answers out of the WHO as well there sometimes there isn't much that you can do but you can try to contact other sources like I said if your government doesn't respond maybe WHO will respond to your speculation or maybe you can find an outside expert who's willing to say something about them and other than that I think you know what I always do is send a follow-up or give them a call and say hey I've asked you this question several times you do mind answering to what extent governments respond to that difference from one country to the next and from one agency to the next but I think it's important just to be insistent and see what you can get if you have a deadline obviously if nobody responds by your deadline then I would just report it consciously and I would make clear that some of your information is unconfirmed or that it's speculation and not report anything as fat that you don't know for sure well here's an important interesting one more question from Rainbow Incid in Johannesburg here we go there are stories doing the rounds online about the origins of Ebola suspicions that it has an origin in CIA, US military by a weapon program for example journalists in Africa have a responsibility to address these he or she says and how would you Martin tackle those that's a very good and important question yes there are there are I call them conspiracy theories suspicions that Ebola was some sort of a bioweapon I don't think that's true I think part of the reason people may think that is that a lot of research on Ebola has been done by the US military US military military has long had an interest in developing countermeasures for Ebola because it worries that it's soldiers might be exposed to it that it might be used as a bioweapon or they might go to countries where there is an Ebola epidemic and they want vaccines and drugs so there is a lot of research that has been done so far was pioneered by the US military but that doesn't mean that they spread the disease or that they spread it I think the evidence shows that it is virus that originates in animals most likely in bats and it has several possible routes that it can cause human epidemics how do you tackle those rooms that's difficult sometimes by addressing them you give them more credibility than they deserve on the other hand if these rooms are very persistent I think it's a good idea to write about them and to basically try to explain that there is very little evidence thank you that's a really important one to tackle here's a related question from Akra is the search for a cure for Ebola deliberate ordinary people think the West is just not committed that's another good question I think I think that's I think don't think it's true that the West is not committed I think most has been WHO which has sort of guided this process normally it's companies drug and vaccine companies in this case WHO has tried to coordinate it all to bring the people together the companies the experts in the countries doctors with our borders a lot of stakeholders in this process have been brought together to Geneva to really see how can we speed this process up how can we how fast can we produce these drugs can we find answers quicker can we compress that timeline that I showed you of the drug development process so I think the West is not committed we don't I think it's completely unprecedented what happens now we've never seen drugs and vaccines race through that process I think it's a pretty unique situation and you have to realize this outbreak is less than a year old but that in terms of developing a drug that is not a long time for instance if you look at HIV AIDS the first effective against HIV didn't come on the market until 1996 that was more than 15 years after HIV emerged so I think we're moving fast yes I guess it's just not moving quite fast enough and of course because of the specificity of the Ebola virus really breaking out in a very virulent speedy and widespread manner across West Africa obviously it can't come fast enough for all the thousands of people that are involved and at the moment we're up to about a death toll of about 7000 people as we speak if I can say one more thing about that if I can say one more thing please do the question does make an important point I think until now until this outbreak is massive epidemic I don't think the West was very committed nobody was very committed but and that's important because Ebola happened in Africa that probably would have been a drug if it occurred in the West but the other factor is that Ebola outbreaks occurred maybe once a year once over two years sometimes twice a year but they were always contained there were never more than a few hundred patients if you add up all of the adult patients before this current epidemic I think there were two and a half thousand in 40 years and I don't know how many deaths exactly but less fewer than two thousand so that is not really a good market, a good target group to get up the drug for nobody is interested in developing a drug that maybe can help 50 to 100 people a year yes that's a very good point you make there's a question from Floros Majani from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania hello Florence here's your question to Martin what should the journalists do if they face bureaucracy from the government system when they seek information about Ebola specifically if there is an alert of an Ebola patient so it's a bit similar to one you tackled a bit previously but it's an important message to get out it is an important message and I know how frustrating it is when you have when you face that bureaucracy and you don't get answers and I should say that it's not just an African problem I've tried many times to get an answer from a government agency in my own country or the West and I have to wait for days or even weeks and then finally when you do have an answer it's kind of vague it doesn't really tell you anything it's just a general statement I would say be insistent I really need an answer and hope accountable and if they don't answer I usually put up my story I say you know so and so this agency didn't respond to multiple requests for comment or the ministry declined to answer any questions about another make it clear also to the reader that you tried to find the answer and you didn't get anywhere that's no shame in that I think but it's good to point it out so that you see that the government was deflecting these questions I have to say that as somebody who's half French half British that's quite an Anglo-Saxon thing to do I think it's very healthy one should not overuse it but if one has genuinely tried as my experience as a journalist to get an answer it is important to let your viewer your listener your audience know that the reason that you don't have that in your report because it's not because you haven't tried again and again but of course the important thing for us journalists is to really genuinely try to get those answers so you don't just put that as a sentence in your report if you haven't genuinely tried repeatedly to try and get an answer you do have to let people give them a chance to give the answer but otherwise it's very important to include that and again I would just try to seek the answers elsewhere if the government in Tanzania doesn't answer and maybe you can go to WHO Africa write the press offices in Brazil and they'll say can you help me with this because I'm not getting an answer from my own government or write the press offices in Geneva their names are also on the WHO website and they just try to give the global picture and just try to know what's happening everywhere so it's worth trying Martin, thank you so much for answering these questions last is going to be the last question I think we're going to have time for it's again from Accra very active there in Accra, thank you if I suspect officials are not being truthful with information on suspected cases what can I do? That's another very good question obviously if they're not being truthful that's a serious matter especially with diseases like Ebola I guess I would try to get the information elsewhere if you feel that the government is hiding something maybe you can find answers from somebody who knows the situation through some other angle maybe somebody is willing to speak off the record within the ministry on the other hand I would also warn or caution that there have been a lot of countries with suspected Ebola cases around the world people come from Liberia or Sierra Leone or Guinea, they travel somewhere else they feel sick, they have a fever they have diarrhea that often doesn't mean they have Ebola they need to be tested but most of these suspected cases have not turned out they weren't real cases so don't compare if there is a suspected case in your country that the government must be hiding it, that doesn't have to be the case obviously Well, here's actually the very last question that's why journalism one should never say it's the last or never say never Here we go, thank you to Abuja Nigeria and to Chinere Opya from Hot FM for your question Martin here we go how can a journalist report a new Ebola outbreak in a country declared Ebola free without being seen by the government as creating a stigma for that country what an excellent question Very good question and hi Chinere we know each other it's a good question Well, I don't think it is really the journalist job to report the outbreak because as a journalist you don't have the means to test somebody and to say okay there's an outbreak in this or that city it is usually the government's job to make sure that Ebola suspected Ebola cases get investigated and when they are positive and there is an outbreak it's the government that will have to report it and then of course you can report it as a journalist it doesn't create a stigma for your country it's just a fact that there is Ebola in your country at that point and you can you can report it I don't think it would be very rare I think for journalists for journalists to report an outbreak before the government does unless you've really discovered the scandal and you're absolutely sure that there is Ebola somewhere and the government is hiding it then you would have to report it but you'd have to be very sure that you're right and that's not something you do in the course of your daily work I think Anna a 60 second answer if you would what about countries that are Ebola free what can journalists helpfully do send the public message of what to do like the washing of hands the not shaking of hands you know going to treatment centres what can they positively do for the moment Ebola free countries I think they can do a lot of research to start spreading the prevention message before the disease is there so that if they have an imported case and there is an outbreak like it in Mali now that people are already aware that it may come and what they need to do start talking about avoiding physical contact with patients start talking about safe barriers even before there was a single Ebola case but just to prepare people that something might happen without being too panicky or creating too much alarm but it's good to to prepare the country I think so start spreading the prevention message and also ask the question is our government, is our country prepared for this do we know what needs to happen if it happens Martin entering from science magazine in Amsterdam thank you so much for both your presentation your openness and your thoroughness also in the answers to your questions we received really very very grateful and know much more now about best practices for health journalism and how to find data thanks to you it's my pleasure oh it's been wonderful thank you very much indeed now we're going to go to black for just a moment you will see very little on your screen that will just be for a one to two minute break and then we will return with Jonathan Hamilton from National Public Radio so stand by for that in just a moment