Dr. Christian Happi

We had an outbreak that started in Lagos, in a city with 23 million people, in a country of 230 million people.

We deployed Sentinel, we worked with public health authorities in Nigeria, and we showed that we could control that outbreak in a very spectacular way.

Nigeria actually was able to contain the Ebola outbreak in 93 days with only 20 cases and a death.

That was a first demonstration of the power and the firepower behind the Sentinel program.

And then we went further in subsequent years to contain local outbreaks.

I can give you the instance of a situation whereby in the southern part of Nigeria, for instance, within two weeks, 179 children died of a mysterious disease in court.

A lot of the tests that they did locally proved negative.

The Nigeria Center for Disease Control sent 20 samples in our lab, and in 72 hours, we established that it was yellow fever.

But then this yellow fever that was killing children of school age was different from the ones that have been circulating in Nigeria for the past 94 years.

And within 10 days, that outbreak was contained, saving thousands of lives.

The Sentinel system proved that it worked.

It proved that it was efficient and it proved that it can contain this outbreak in a very spectacular way at each time when we deployed it.

Yes.

I mean, the early detection was a challenge.

Also, remember that this outbreak started in a place called Ituri.

Ituri was a place where there's almost virtually no government.

The place is governed by armed groups, you know, militias that are all controlling mineral resources.

So I think when an outbreak starts in a social place where there's virtually no government presence, who reports what?

And then who actually takes the necessary measures to actually put that under control?

That's what happened.