Dr. Jean Kaseya

The head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Jean Kaseya, dismissed criticism they had taken too long to coordinate a response. We landed with a joint plan of 319 million dollars to stop this outbreak. And more importantly, we also agreed on a continental mechanism to coordinate this response led by Africa CDC and WHO supported by all other partners.

Many who will be listening to you will be wondering how come there wasn't a plan in place already, because your organization was created in response to that large outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. The world must even congratulate Africa CDC, because on the 15th of May, Africa CDC declared this outbreak when we got evidence that more than one country was infected. Second, we

We immediately started to interact with authorities who declared this outbreak the same day and started to work on the plan. And in about three days all countries had a plan. In about four days I organized a meeting with all partners and all countries. Now we have the plan ready. We did it quickly as much as possible we could do.

So what are the details of the plan? The plan is articulated around 11 pillars. These 11 pillars will help us to contain the outbreak. As you know, currently we don't have vaccines, we don't have medicines, and we are mostly relying on a better coordination how to bring countries and partners together to avoid wastage.

Second, we are mostly targeting the risk communication and we are targeting how to test, test and test to isolate cases.

And you say that your budget is 319 million dollars. How much have you raised so far and what are the priorities? I'm first proud of African countries. You know, I'm someone talking every day about the sovereignty of African countries. I request African countries to start with an initial contribution. So far, 10% of the budget was already secured by African countries. In addition to that, we got 2.5 million from South Africa. It means African countries are coming to support the response.

This current outbreak, Ebola outbreak, is the second largest outbreak that

from West Africa in terms of her cases.