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- [00:01]
A
Ebola killed over 11,000 people during the 2014-2016 outbreak. We were one of the first responders in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea in 2014. And the Ebola response was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of our career at E Health Africa, and honestly, just our career in general. In the episode today, myself and my co founder Adam Thompson talk about our experiences during that time. It's really funny how memory works because I think we were so overwhelmed and so stressed during this time that both Adam and I have a really hard time remembering many of the specifics from the response. So we would honestly love to hear from former EHA staff or other people that we worked with during this time. If you have memories that you would like to share, like, please reach out and share them with us. It would be really fun to hear them with that. Let's jump into today's episode. All right, so today we are going to have a conversation about the Ebola response and our involvement in that. So I don't have, like, a great structure for our conversation today because I was kind of trying to go through. And I just feel like there's like a million and one things to talk about. So I think we'll just kind of start from the beginning and go through some things. I have a couple. A couple areas, but I think we can kind of just chat about it and see what we want to discuss. So let's talk about kind of how we got started in it. So obviously we did the Ebola response in Nigeria, which we already talked about, and then we got asked to go and set up the EOCs in other countries. And I thought it was really cool. And I feel like it's worth mentioning because for documentation purposes, that we did actually get an email from Thomas Friedman Frieden. Yeah, Frieden. Yeah. The director of CDC at the time, specifically asking us to go, which is kind of cool. I went back and looked it up.
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B
Oh, that's cool.
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A
Yeah, he was the one that sent the email, or was on the email at least asking us to go and do that in. It was Sierra Leone that we started. Right.
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B
Followed by Liberia, followed by Guinea.
- [02:09]
A
What I remember is I remember us being down in Lagos and the idea of us going to these other countries kind of came up. And don't you remember? Like, we had spoken to this guy Olu about joining the Nigeria team, but then everything was changing so quickly. And so we ended up meeting him when we were in Lagos and. And then basically being like, we met him, it was maybe like a 30 minute meeting. And we were basically just like, well, we have this job in, in Sierra Leone. Can you go get like a visa and get on a plane like as quickly as humanly possible and go. And he was like, yeah, sure, why not? Which was pretty cool. I mean, for him to do that. Yeah, but what else do you remember about that kind of like the decision of actually going and like, do you remember where we going there to actually do? We didn't know the scope of what we were going to do when we said yes to this.
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B
I think the first part was actually just scoping like the initial contract was just to go there and then basically look at what the requirements were and then kind of come up with a plan. And that's when we kind of came up with the plan of like, I think it was. We proposed obviously the EOC and then the coordination to support it. And then similar to what we were doing with docs, we then also proposed that like, we could be the managers and implementers for other funds, you know, that were coming in. We didn't know what that was going to look like at the time, but it was like basically kind of operational management facilities and financial management for the money that was coming in to support. There was like random activities.
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A
And the first country. So Olu went first to Sierra Leone and kind of got started with things, but you followed pretty quickly after him. And your first country was Sierra Leone that you went to, right? Yeah. And what do you remember about arriving?
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B
There wasn't much going on, obviously. Unfortunately, I mean, obviously the case numbers were high. I remember like the flights were already restricted, so there are very limited ways to get there. And I think you have to fly like Air Morocc.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And I remember having to like leave like Lagos at 3am and, and then arriving very, very early or late, you know, in Sierra Leone and then having to like bus down to some boat that was like a little tiny boat with like 10 people on it. But there was a flight of like 300 people. But they could only take boats of like 10 people at a time. So I think I sat there most of the morning and by the time I reached the other side of the whatever, like the sun was coming up. So it was like a long, long journey.
- [04:26]
A
Yeah, that was pretty awful because I remember waking up to a message. I can't remember it was a phone call or a message from you. And I remember I was in Kano at the time and I'm pretty sure it was something along the lines of like, well, I got into Sierra Leone. I. They're telling me I need to get on a boat. I don't know what's happening, but I'm just gonna go with it.
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B
Yeah, it's weird that we didn't know that going into it like that. It was just like, yeah, get on this boat, go across. And then, yeah, it was just the whole. Quite a whole shit show. Yeah. Because I don't remember where we stayed at the time when we first.
- [04:54]
A
It was. It must have been Country Lodge, remember? Because I also remember you sending a. We were video chatting or something and you sending me a video of the monkeys at Country Lodge. But it's kind of funny, I mean, looking at, you know, even the development of Sierra Leone as a country over like that time frame, you know, like where you stayed at Country Lodge, like during that time, like, there still was road going up there, there were still monkeys there. And then just in like the five years, you know, everything changed. There's like no monkeys there anymore. Like, it's like a urban area now. So kind of crazy.
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B
Yeah, that's. That was quite weird. And. Yeah, and at that time, like the exodus had recently happened, so people had just like, I think the month before was when all the NGOs and companies were pulling out all their international staff and they'd yet to kind of come back. It would be a few more months until they come back. But yeah, so it was like, in terms of like the hotels and stuff, there were ghost towns. I mean, I think there were three, four people at Country Lodge at the time, if that even. And two of them were us, me and. Me and Olu.
- [05:51]
A
So the first place that we went to was Sierra Leone. And I think it fairly early on the decision was that we were going to do these EOCs or the emergency operation centers. And like, again, in my mind looking back, I feel like it was just kind of like this domino effect of like, okay, now we're going to Liberia and then next thing I know we're, you know, talking about guinea. And I think maybe between saying yes to Sierra Leone, to Liberia and then to guinea was maybe a two month time gap. Is that what you remember as well?
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B
Yeah, it all happened relatively quickly because.
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A
The first thing was really saying we're going to do the EOCs in all three countries. Right. And that was the number one thing that we started with. Plus then adding on these kind of just like just, we're just going to give you money to get to Shen, basically and pay people. Yeah. Do you remember, like, some of the kind of, like, early big wins. Because I know that there were a lot of stuff that we did, especially in Sierra Leone, around, like, cash payments to people, to health workers. Do you remember, like, right in the beginning, what were some of the big wins that you put together in Sierra Leone?
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B
The first ones. I mean, the first big wins were things like just. Yeah. Getting the facilities to work, you know, because the original EOC was just at the WTO office, and it was just a mess. And I don't know why it was such a mess, because it's who office. But anyway, it was a huge mess. And so just like, sorting that out and, like, getting people in there to assist and, you know, getting the Internet to work and, you know, very small things like that. And then we worked very early on the call center on the. Starting to helping sort out the 117. I don't remember all. There's a lot of stuff in the districts that we, again, started working on. Yeah, I mean, it was just. It was so many different things. I mean, because it turned into doing the, like, supporting the regional offices very quickly. And so it was hiring people, getting people out there, making sure that things worked, getting equipment in, just, you know, computers, laptops, Internet and things like that. Can't think of the specifics. I remember sometimes it was buying food, getting food to certain districts that were in lockdown. That was a big thing.
- [07:47]
A
Yeah. And this is why I said, like, the structure of this call is a little bit, like, it's hard to think back to some of this stuff. Like, so much was going on at that time that it's just kind of, you know, crazy to think about. One of the stories that will always stay with me was in Sierra Leone, like, one of the jokes that one of the staff used to say was that he was working so hard that one day he showed up with two different shoes on. And, like. And I don't think that that was, like, a joke. I think that was, like, a true thing that happened. So I think that kind of shows, like, how crazy it was at the time, but I mean, also how a lot of people were working really, really hard, you know, to implement all of the things that we were doing. But again, like, so you went there at end of August. I didn't end up going to any of the Ebola countries until February the next year. And even that kind of gap in time frame, you know, I think that the atmosphere kind of had changed by the time I was there, because more people had started coming back by that time. So I was wondering if you could kind of just talk a little bit more about like the atmosphere in the country those first couple of months when it was a ghost town and it was really like this kind of like early on show and everybody was so scared, you know. What were you feeling at the time, traveling between those places?
- [08:57]
B
Well, I mean, again, I think early on Lagos was a good primer. And so I think a lot of the initial kind of like fear had gone away in terms of like, okay, well, you know, it's actually not that easy to get Ebola. Like so it was easy in our work, you know, not in the medical field to get stuff done. There's this obsession with people. A lot of the people coming in, everyone wanted to like tour treatment centers. I thought everyone was absolutely mad. Like, why? I never understood why, why that was like the obsession, like people that had nothing to do with treatment that were working on like case finding and stuff like that. Everyone wanted to come in and tour treatment centers.
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A
I mean, it's the whole poverty porn thing, which is disgusting.
- [09:31]
B
Yeah, it was just a really weird thing and kind of unnecessary and dangerous. Yeah. And weird. Yeah. Just weirdly, stupidly dangerous and unhelpful. Well, there just wasn't much. Right. I mean, so the groups that were operating, it was us, obviously, CDC was there and then the Tony Blair folks.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Tbi and then, you know, then you know, who and stuff like that. So the first battle was like just to get the WHO director at the time was just a complete. And was like, we don't need help. Why are you here? And CDC was like, like, it's a complete mess. Like, this is why you're here. Anyway, it took a while for them just to agree on doing like the kind of command center EOC approach to the point where like they didn't actually agree first. We ended up going to set it up because, oh, the British military were the other people. So the British military group was at one of the meetings and they're like, they were in charge of the western district.
- [10:19]
A
Yeah.
- [10:19]
B
And they kind of heard the pitch who was uninterested. So they weren't. We couldn't change it. But the military folks were like, come over here and we'll do it. We'll do it in western urban or whatever.
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A
Yeah, yeah, Western urban. Yeah.
- [10:29]
B
Was like, do it here. And so we did it there. And then that worked out really well because we had the calls coming in and we had them routed there and we've got, we had the team with the pillars and all the stuff and it worked. Really well. And it was like, you know, the response times went down, like, went from like 72 hours to, like under 24 hours to have case reports followed up on. So it was really dramatic and it was like, really quick that the impact. So then, of course, then at that point, I think the director. The WHO director left, went somewhere else. And then the CDC team had called us back and was like, okay, we're ready to do this at a national level, and then started working on that. I think the containers were coming in at some point as well. Like the prefab building that they did. Then there was more interest in them, like, doing that. And then that's right then. Because then they appointed a national coordinator that was Sierra Leonean. And so then he was a little bit. A little bit easier to work with because then it was under their control. And the WHO kind of like still managed like the. The pillars, like one of the pillars, but they didn't manage the overall well.
- [11:23]
A
Remember, they fired the Minister of Health at the time. Remember, it was a lady, and they kind of blew. Blamed the really poor response on her and they ended up firing her. Yeah. And then they pointed somebody new. I think during this time, I mean.
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B
The Ministry of Health didn't have a good response because. Didn't really have a response. Right. I mean, they didn't have anything.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But it definitely was. It was a WHO show from the beginning. And I think WH tried to keep it that way because they didn't want everyone to know how badly everything was going. Because I remember those meetings and WH would be like, everything's great, nothing to report, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then MSF would attend those meetings and just yell at everybody because they're like, are you kidding? Because they were running some of the treatment centers and being like, we're overwhelmed. It's going mad. And who was like, you're being a bit dramatic. Everything's fine. And they kept doing that. They just kept doing that for a while because they said, well, there's. That's one of the reasons they didn't want the EOCs is because they just didn't think there was any benefit to improving coordination or of the response. But yeah, but anyway, luckily you had the military group that was like, wait, structure, order, planning. Yes, come do that. Like, show us how to do that.
- [12:26]
A
Yeah. So that's kind of what we did in Sierra Leone. And then Liberia was like a little bit of a different approach. And I kind of want to talk about, like, the staffing hires, that decisions that we made between the two countries too, and kind of what your thoughts were on that. So I remember we hired this guy Ernie to come to Sierra Leone. And he. I think he landed in Sierra Leone. And like two days later, we basically were like, yeah, we need you to get in these cars with that fleet company and we need you guys all to drive to Liberia, and then you're gonna help set up the Liberia office. I will say, even though some of these people ended up not working out, always in the end, like, more power to them for just being like, sure, let's go and do the. You know, let's get it done. And that was a pretty, Pretty brave thing for him to do. The response in Liberia was a little bit different. We didn't obviously have the British military. There was a much stronger US US force there. And I believe from what I remember, the major things that we did there was, yes, the eoc, but then also those community center things.
- [13:29]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think that was the biggest part. A lot of it was attending coordination meetings. And unfortunately, that was a lot of the response in Liberia was a lot of meetings because all the groups wanted to be part of the national coordination team. There was like, people jostling to be allowed to be into it. And at some point those meetings were so big. And again, during an outbreak, it had to be like. It was like, cut down. And people were really like, oh, well, it was a big ordeal about who got cut out of it and who was allowed to do stuff. And things actually moved. Well. We started doing, like, the contact tracing, the data system early on.
- [13:58]
A
And we had the. It was. The tag and go thing was kind of was a fairly cool technology that we did, which was basically one of the issues in Liberia was they just couldn't track who was coming into the health centers and then what was ending up happening to them because a lot of people were just dying and then no one had any idea that they were dying. Yeah. And so we. I mean, I still think that the name of that app was a little bit like, you're tagging dead bodies, basically like tag and go. But it was pretty successful at the time.
- [14:29]
B
Yeah, Just to have that record. Because what was happening is people were storming the health centers because they wanted to know updates on their loved ones. And there's. Gave them updates without them having to, like, all rush there and yell at people.
- [14:40]
A
We did a bunch of lab work in Liberia too. Didn't we set up a lab?
- [14:43]
B
No, we'd set up the transport network because the US military even Though they were flying helicopters over the country, wouldn't transport the COVID samples.
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A
Right.
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B
So we had to set up, like, a network of bikes and then, like, a tracking system for them.
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A
But we did that with Riders for Health.
- [14:58]
B
Riders for Health came in later and, like, took it over. But, like, they didn't do it initially. I think they did it, like, in Monrovia. But, like, we did the rest of the network and they weren't involved. But then they came over because someone brought them and was like, well, they will do this for now. Because they had a grant to do it. But, like, we had already been doing it and they just took it over.
- [15:15]
A
Okay.
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B
Because their name is literally Writers for Health. So they were like, well, these people must do it.
- [15:18]
A
Yeah, I remember that.
- [15:19]
B
But at that point, Writers for Health was really floundering. So it was the only country they were operating in at the time because they. All their other country offices had closed and, like, failed.
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A
Yeah, because I remember at one point we were trying to help them with the technology and it just was, you.
- [15:32]
B
Know, was trying to help them with everything, like, did their plan for them. But eventually we just ended up running the bike network without them. It was only when we started, like, reducing our work there that we handed that over to them.
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A
Yeah, at some point they did take over, because I remember when I was there for a long time, we weren't.
- [15:46]
B
Doing that anymore, but it was by insistence of somebody because they'd given them a grant.
- [15:49]
A
USAID or CDC or somebody.
- [15:51]
B
Yeah, usaid. It was usaid. Yeah. Gave them the grant to do it. So then they were like, well, they have to do it now.
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A
Well, because remember, we also did the exact same thing in Sierra Leone. That was one of the big things that we started with, too. Right. Was the lap transport, because we had a big fleet of bikes around Freetown. We did that, too. So, yeah, I forgot that that was one of the big things we did.
- [16:08]
B
Yeah. I mean, we even did things like we provided all the vehicles for the CDC staff. Like, we managed their fleet for them.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Which is a lot.
- [16:15]
A
So let's talk about a couple of the more controversial things.
- [16:20]
B
Well, I was going to say that. Yeah, the difference between. Between that August to February was dramatic because it went from, like, ghost town, even to some extent in Liberia. There were more groups in Liberia, but it went from ghost town to, like, all of a sudden, by February, everybody was there. Yeah, everyone was flying in. And it was almost like Freetown in Liberia had, like, this weird, like, party atmosphere, because it was like a bunch of 20 something year olds coming in and went from like ghost town, scary Ebola to like parties on the beach.
- [16:45]
A
And like, I had a freaking blast. So I remember because again, it's funny because, like, I tell the story sometimes about when you were in Lagos, remember? And you were like freaking out and like saying how stressed you were or whatever. And then I finally went down to see you and there was a water slide at the hotel pool. And so there was that. And I'm just like, what the. Adam? And then same thing, you go to Sierra Leone and Liberia and you're calling me and you're like, you know, telling me all this crazy that's happening. And so finally I end up going, remember? And it was my birthday, like right when I arrived. And we went to. I don't even know if you remember, remember this? We went to Country Lodge and it was that other guy's birthday. Yeah, Tommy, he has the same birthday as me and he threw like this giant birthday party at Country Lodge. And again, I'm just like, Adam, what the hell? And I, I realized that, like, I just.
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B
At first. Yeah, you came in.
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A
Yeah, I came in right when things started getting weird. I don't even want to say fun, because it wasn't fun. It was just weird, like the atmosphere around it.
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B
Yeah. Because then things also became like weirdly competitive. Like instead of being like this kind of coordinating, everyone was working. All of a sudden, the woman from TBI screaming at me. And I think it's because they want the grant to run the thing. And it's like, well, I don't really care, do what you want. Like, we can use our money for, you know, it's just like that whole kind of spirit of collaboration kind of started like going out the window and it became like quite difficult to like manage everyone.
- [18:01]
A
Yeah, well, so let's talk about some of the. Looking back, I guess funnier but kind of, you know, more ridiculous things that happened. So one of the big issues during the early parts of Sierra Leone was that, and if you can tell the story, because I don't remember it, the guy from the telecoms tried to get you kicked out of the country, who was also named Evelyn.
- [18:22]
B
Well, he wasn't from the telecoms. Like, he was just like a random. IT had an IT contractor and like did all these government contracts. But he was like based in the US but like would fly in and get these government bids because I think he would like, connected with somebody. Like, this guy didn't have anything. He had some, I don't know who paid him. But at some point, he thought he was going to run the 117 line, which again, was like, okay, go do it. But then it was really bad. So we stepped in to help them and we, like, started building stuff. And eventually they were just like, could you just actually go and just. We'll just let Yield Africa manage it, because, like, we don't need you to do it. And, like, we were paying for it. Right. We were using CDC foundation money to pay for it. And Evelyn and his team didn't have any money. And so I remember having that whole battle with them. And, yeah, like, he had, like, newspaper articles against. Because he kind of made it seem like we took a contract, we took business from him, but, like, no one was ever gonna pay him for it. Yeah, it was a whole weird thing because I just remember that whole battle. I was like, well, if you've got the money to do it, do it then. But, like, you know, we have our own money to do it, so you choose. And it was just like, this whole weird battle. But eventually, like, I think he realized that he wasn't gonna make any money and then eventually left. But he just had this idea that, like, the government contract was coming and we'd stolen his government contract, but the government money never came anyway. So I think eventually he just gave up and went away.
- [19:31]
A
Yeah, so there was that with the 117 in Sierra Leone, and then there was a whole other issue in Liberia with their call center, because we started doing it, and then again, something happened. Do you remember what that was?
- [19:42]
B
Yeah. So there were two things there. One was the guy who was kind of the de facto head of the response from the Ministry of Health that we were, like, on and off, like, chummy with. He was just a weirdo, and, like, he just wanted control of everything. And so all the stuff was happening, like. So for, like, the lab samples. Like, everyone was sending the lab samples and the results just over email. And everyone just shared this Gmail account and just shared that login and password with, like, all of the NGOs. Like, 50 people. No, probably more than that. Probably 150 people had access to this. And then someone wrote a paper, like, someone that was in the country collected a bunch of data based on that system and then wrote a paper on it. And at that. Or was writing a paper on. At that point, we'd set up. We had a more rational sample management system that was a bit more secure and reported, and he just shut it all down. Like, he just came in and was like, he wanted something that the Ministry controlled. And we're like, but this is your control. And you know, he was just against it. So he. So he just shut it down. And he just kept doing that with everything. The call center was failing, we stepped in, we set it up and it was working. And then a different guy, the guy that was the head of the telecom group, they thought they should be running it and so we stepped away, we let them take it. And then it just again, like it just fell apart. It was like, it was just weird. All the government agencies wanted to take over. And again, I think it was mostly a money thing, right? I think it was just like, well, if we run it, then someone has to pay us. But then no one did because no one was going to give money to the government. And so it just failed. And then occasionally we would get called back into support and to do different things.
- [21:07]
A
But just to also mention, remember that like Hans Rosling was there and can you like again talk about like what he was doing and like how you guys like talk together? Because that was kind of cool. But I would assume he was getting access to all that free data as well too, to do, you know, his analysis with.
- [21:22]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think he was kind of anti this data going out kind of things. He wanted the Ministry to like, kind of manage that and be the ones writing it.
- [21:30]
A
But what was he doing?
- [21:31]
B
Yeah, so he was just doing, helping with the data analysis. So we discussed a lot of things and there was a whole discussion around the electronic data collection and he didn't really think it would work. These kind of old, you know, paper surveys, teams like, whatever. And we had this whole setup where we're trying to convince them to switch to this electronic method because we can do the follow faster. We know the teams are check in, you've got like almost real time updates of like that the visits actually happened. And they were against it, against it, against it, against it. And we had this thing where Hans, like, would he sit down with me because we're at the same hotel and we'd both get up very, very early and so we'd sit down at breakfast with me and just launch into like something about like making me like defend these points I made in our argument two days ago. And I just was like, it's 5:00 in the morning, I need coffee yet. But eventually we had this bet where he's just like, well, you know, it's just going to be more reliable. Where are we going to get the phones? And I was just like, It's Liberia. Like, you know, I promise you, the households you walk into, more people will have phones than have pencils and paper. And we had a little bet and then he went out and he was like, you're right, no one has pencil and paper in their house. People know how to use phones more than they know how to use pencil and paper. And then he then went and told Luke we should do this. And then Luke agreed and we started the contact tracing system based on that kind of ODK thing and then go to that software he made afterwards. And that was the kind of premise of it. But yeah, we just kind of, we got together and we talked a lot about the data and like how, you know, what was coming in and what those trends meant.
- [22:54]
A
And interesting, before we get into guinea, because that's going to be a whole other topic, I kind of wanted to kind of keep comparing between Sierra Leone and Liberia and I wanted to get your opinion because I was thinking about this yesterday a little bit and basically about like, how the countries ran and our role in each of the two countries and our relationship in each of these, the two countries, because I do feel like they were very different. And granted, like, Sierra Leoneans and Liberians are very different people. The countries are very different. So, you know, I think that that played a role in it. But then also I was thinking, you know, in Sierra Leone, we ended up hiring two women who had both worked in Sierra Leone before to really be the runs running that country office and, and getting stuff done. And then in, in Liberia, you know, we had a bunch of young white men, one old white man running the stuff that we were doing there. You know, if you kind of like, look at that, do you feel like that had any play or what type of influence do you think that that had on kind of the type of work that we did and the relationships that we had in country?
- [23:58]
B
It's hard to say. I mean, the responses were semi similar and to be honest, like, both teams at the end of the day wanted to kind of like do their own thing and not really kind of like listen or take feedback. But yeah, I mean, the thing is the guys in Liberia, minus Ernie and I think Aji who was there eventually were, like I said, I mean, you had. So he's much more, let me talk and write stuff down and give lots of presentations, but not actually do anything because I remember getting there and being like, where is everything? Why hasn't anything happened? Because. And then that's why, like, I think Aji and Atif had to go to, like, actually get stuff moving. And then eventually, yeah, the software stuff kind of took off. But like, it was just this on and off, back and forth, like battle with the government to get buy in. Because I think they just had this idea that we know what's going to work. On the other side, it was much more clear that our role was like, support and coordination. So none of our team ever actually, I think, gave a presentation at an EOC meeting. Like, that was not our job. Yeah, in Sierra Leone, whereas, like in Liberia, they wanted to be the ones, you know, leading the meetings. Like one that's not our role. So they're very different from the kind of outset around kind of how they saw our support role and that. Yeah, that played a role in how our teams worked. The other thing was just how things played out in Sierra Leone because of that focus on coordination. Like, the EOCs came together really well, and the district coordination centers, everyone was involved in the district coordination center. In Liberia, everyone still kind of did their own thing. Like, so Even once the EOCs and the community centers came together, the US military had their own thing, some of the big NGOs had their own thing. And then even the government itself kind of was doing its own, you know, doing different things. The Ministry of Health was doing one thing. Ministry of Telecoms was involved at some point. These other groups, Ministry of Education, whatever, they all kind of had their own thing going on. Nobody was really using those EOCs as a coordination mechanism. Whereas in, like, Sierra Leone, everything was coordinated. Like, everything that happened in the district went through the coordination center or it didn't happen. But in Liberia, people just went to the counties with their grant money and their government contracts and just did whatever the hell they wanted and kind of ignored the coordination mechanism because they didn't have to. I mean, at some point you had, like, people kind of have it running, like parallel emergency operation centers, you know, in the Chipago. Yeah, they basically just had their own team, set up a new team at the Ministry of Health because they were funded. They had USA AID money. They just did their own thing because they had money to do it. And if they just joined the coordination one, they weren't needed and they wouldn't be able to justify their USAID contract.
- [26:14]
A
Yeah, well, that was kind of a weird thing in Liberia, where the entire freaking country was funded through usaid. And so then it was really weird when CDC came in and, you know, actually was doing a lot of this stuff in a fairly organized way with us, that USA just Never even, like, got on board. And it's just so weird that they're both, like, American entities. It'd be easier to understand if they weren't both American.
- [26:35]
B
But, yeah, you'd have CDC through US funding. Like I said, like, the sample transport network. And then USA just shows up and it's like, well, we funded riders for help to do it. The same thing happened with the call center. Like. Like, well, we funded someone else to do it. Like, just like, yeah, that's the one. But from Johns Hopkins, the communication group. Yeah, they just took over the call center. And we were like. But then they didn't know how to run it. They didn't know how to do anything. But they were the comms people. And so we're like, well, I don't know what that has to do with anything. But then eventually, CDC was like, well, stop wasting your money. USA's paying for it. Let them work it out. And there's a lot of battles over, like, well, we're in charge here. We'll take. Because they had the money to take. Do it even though it was already being done. Like, it didn't need someone else to take it over. And so there's a lot of things like that where, again, again, a lot of some of the other Johns Hopkins groups just kept showing up in the counties running completely parallel programs to what the government and CDC and some of the other groups had agreed to run. And again, like I said, in contrast to Sierra Leone, where it was actually pretty strongly coordinated and there was an agreement very early on that, like, anything, yeah, you might have your own money, you might have your own whatever, but if you're coming into this district, your first stop is the command center. And then from there.
- [27:40]
A
Yeah. And it's kind of interesting because, you know, now we're doing these polio EOCs in the countries. And so, you know, we went back to Liberia to do the polio eoc, and it's not being done out of. So the entire EOC that we did for Ebola has basically shut down. It got turned into somebody's office, apparently. And then the polio EOC was out of the ministry, not out of that building. You know, and still in. In Sierra Leone, the EOC is still functioning pretty well and maintained. So that all kind of just makes sense. All right. So some of the other, you know, things to just highlight that I thought were good to, like, keep on record was just, like, our hiring process during that time, which is just absolutely insane. So, like, I remember I was calling people and doing 30 minute interviews in the Kano office, trying to get people that would be willing to, to come to Sierra Leone and Liberia. And if they just sounded even slightly competent, at the end of 30 minutes, I was just offering them a job.
- [28:33]
B
Yeah.
- [28:34]
A
And buying them a plane ticket, basically being like, how fast can you get there? We'll get you the visa, we'll get you everything. And like, again, it's kind of interesting to look back because, like, not all of those people ended up being what I would probably say were like the right people to be there. Some of them ended up being absolutely nuts. But, you know, interesting that they were willing to get there and to, to do it. And you know, at the time, I think that that's what, what we needed anyways, so it was fine. And then, you know, in country, we were obviously hiring at a crazy rate as well. So I think we ended, you know, at our peak we had around 1200 employees. And that would have been what, 800 in the Ebola countries? Because we had about. Well, no, I guess at that time we had about 600 in the Nigeria office. At our peak, 700. Yeah, six or 700 in the Nigeria office. So the rest were in the Ebola countries. But still, I mean, that was pretty crazy when it came to hiring.
- [29:25]
B
Yeah. When all of a sudden you kind of like turn around and yeah, there's what. We had 120 employees in Liberia alone. And yeah, it was crazy.
- [29:33]
A
Yeah. And then obviously the fact that like, our money just kind of like exploded. I think we went from having, you know, $25 million or maybe even at that point because it was the middle of polio, maybe 3, 30 million dollars in Nigeria. And then we doubled. Our biggest year was 65 million during. I guess that would have been 2015. Actually, I think that was 2016. Weirdly enough, we got more money the.
- [29:56]
B
Second year because of the vaccine trial.
- [29:58]
A
Yeah, exactly. And again, like during that time, just like the controls on that money, obviously from our side, we weren't prepared to manage that amount of money. And you know, we made some obvious big mistakes in losing a lot of our money. Money through just poor management and poor billing. None of it was really misused. That's the annoying part. We just didn't bill properly for our stupid, the stupid things that we should have been billing for.
- [30:19]
B
We should have much higher than 15% overhead rates and. Yeah, yeah, we just.
- [30:24]
A
No, we should have had 15% but just billed for everything that we ended up billing for. We ended up probably only billing for 90% of what we paid for. And then that's why we ended up losing so much money that we should have. Should have actually made on that. So, yeah, I mean, our finance systems were not in place to do this, but I also still look back and think, like, I cannot believe how not in place, like the CDC foundation finance systems were to kind of, like, manage this and, like, how willing they were to just give us money. Because, again, I remember writing, and I tried to go back and find the email, but I couldn't find it. But I remember sending a spreadsheet to the CDCF people, and I remember it being like, three. Three lines of, like, I copied and pasted, like, three lines from an Excel document into an email, and it literally was like, how much you gave me, how much we spent, how much we need. And it was in the millions of dollars. And I think I said, like, we need $3 million for the next month of expenses. And I remember the line I got back was like, no problem. It'll be in your account on Monday. And I just remember just being like, I can't believe, like, they're giving us this kind of money to do this. I mean, and I guess, you know, at the time, they saw all of the work that we were doing, and they had people on ground saying, we need to get these things done and they're doing a good job. So they weren't so hard on us on saying, you need all the documentation, which is really great. You know, I don't think that we could have done everything that we did if we were trying to do documentation along the way.
- [31:46]
B
Yeah, no, I mean, it became a pain for all kinds of stuff.
- [31:49]
A
Yeah, well, when we got the coag, that was ridiculous. It slowed down our operations completely.
- [31:54]
B
Yeah, I mean, I just almost grind everything to a halt because Just couldn't get people to agree on things.
- [31:59]
A
Well, I mean, we had. I think, like, it was something stupid. Every single dollar had to be approved and accounted for, you know, with the coag.
- [32:05]
B
Well, but, yeah, I mean, the problem was, like, you had to agree in order to get the coag, you have to, like, agree up front what you're going to spend it on. But then the whole point of the response funds was things were changing daily. So the problem with that was, like, things were still changing daily. So they'd be like, well, we want you to spend money on this now. Like, well, that's great, but that's not in the coag. We literally have to write for an update, get it approved, and before we can spend that money because otherwise we're on the hook for it because it's not in the agreed plan. I think that's the challenge with cooperative agreements, is you have to have this whole plan that's agreed up front, and then. Yeah, if you don't stick to it, you don't get your money. Yeah, yeah. It's not a good emergency response mechanism for funding.
- [32:43]
A
And even Nicole, she did a great job in helping us manage that cooperative agreement, you know, and the vaccine trial as well. Yeah.
- [32:49]
B
Luckily, like, some of those systems got in place before the vaccine trial really kicked off.
- [32:54]
A
Yeah.
- [32:54]
B
Because that would have been really difficult to do without those controls in place.
- [32:57]
A
Well, I think she just knew. I mean, and this is, like, the point about, like, people that know their way around the system, because I think that, like, Nicole was able to say, I know how the system works, and I know how to, like, just, you know, dot the I's and cross the t's to figure out how to get a lot of this stuff done, you know, more quickly and so that we could actually do it. So I do think she was a huge help in that whole process.
- [33:17]
B
Yeah.
- [33:18]
A
So let's talk a little bit about some of the biggest wins. So we started talking about strive. So I think we can very easily say that STRIVE was one of our biggest wins in the Ebola.
- [33:30]
B
Yeah, definitely.
- [33:31]
A
Yeah. Do you want to talk about, like, the conversation about how we started with Strive and. Yeah. What those initial conversations were.
- [33:39]
B
Yeah, it was really random. I mean, because again, there was a whole different team from CDC that was working on the vaccine trial that was very different than the response team. And it started as sitting down with the person that was in charge of getting it up and running and him telling me what the plan was and being like, you know, that sounds cool. Good luck with that. Because their whole plan was to fund everything through the. Is it Comas. The College of Medical and Allied Health Sciences. Yeah. But then wasn't that long after that that they then came back and was like, oh, actually, we're gonna need you to do this, at least to provide the operational support like we were providing, but just a bit of it. And then again, KOMAS will do everything else and they'll have their own grant and you work together. And then it was like, okay, well, KOMAS actually doesn't have the ability to manage any of these finances. They don't have a finance team. They don't literally have anything. Can you do the whole thing? That's when Stacey was at. I remember telling Stacy, like, no, absolutely not. Like, we're not going to run a vaccine trial in the middle of an Ebola response, you know, with the cdc, who's never run a vaccine trial before at that point. And you have Africa, which never run a vaccine trial because it was a contract. Right. I mean, it was going to be like, if it fails, it's on us kind of thing. And the way that those contracts. So it sounded a bit sketchy around, like, well, if it just fails, like, you know, whatever, we'd be on hook for the contract failing. And so I remember saying that I don't think that's right for us. And they kind of like went away and came back and they were just like, no, but you have to do this. Like no one else. Like they explained the whole comas thing. I just remember specifically saying, like, you know, what the hell, we'll give it a try. I said, but it's going to fail. I just want to be clear on the record now, this project will fail just given all the stuff out of. But we'll try anyway. And yeah, then, yeah, it just kind of went forth from there and they're. I mean, the vaccine team changing all the time. It was a whole mess. But like, it ended up. Yeah, it ended up going really well. It was the only one that actually collected the needed amount of like trial data. Super complicated just with how many people were involved because you had the CROs involved and DARPA or BARDA was. BARDA was involved. FDA was involved. Yeah, it was a whole. But yeah, I actually think it kind of went quite well and was. Was quite an interesting project.
- [35:40]
A
And do you want to just talk a little bit about like the contracting issue that we ended up having? Because again, it was a contract contract, which meant that if we could do it for cheaper than what we said we could, then we were supposed to get that money to keep it. Yeah, but how? I don't remember.
- [35:57]
B
I guess the way the contract was put out there, it was somewhere between a cooperative agreement and whatever. So it actually didn't follow. The way it was written was like a mixture of both for whatever reason. And it was probably just because it got written really fast and they didn't actually make a decision one way or the other. They were debating whether it was going to be a cooperative agreement or I forget what the other kind of time and materials kind of contract. So they couldn't decide. So the language in there kind of was a mixture of both. So they wanted things like, oh, well, you can only charge your overhead rate and da, da, da. This and we're like, well, no, because that's a deliverable based contract. They said, delivering this is this much money. Yes, we delivered it for less because of. We were able to get it cheaper, get it more efficient. But, like, the performance of that activity was worth this much money. And so that was the kind of negotiation back in, forth around, you know, justifying those activities. And then, yeah, it was just a long. Yeah, it was kind of like a long negotiation where we went through like every single expense, like down to like, the filing cabinets that were used and which ones were procured and whether they met the standards and would they pay us for the procurement of the filing cabinets? Because they were A4 filing cabinets and not letter filing cabinets. And yeah, it was a whole thing. The trial was still. We're mid trial at that point. I was like, well, okay, then get someone else to do, like, if you're not unhappy with, you know, this, this agreement, then let someone else do it. And then that's when they're like, no, no, no, calm down, it's fine. And we kind of negotiated everything out. Luckily, we kind of like, really stuck to, like, you know, asking for as much as possible, because I think we left the meeting because it was like three days in Atlanta going through like, number by number and them threatening to like, take $3 million off the budget. And I think we left with like 2 million more or whatever, 4 million more or something much more in the budget than we'd went in with. And they were threatening to take away money. So it was good turnout at the end of the day.
- [37:38]
A
So obviously, Strive was a huge win for us on, like, the Ebola response. I mean, what are the other big wins that you have on your list from that time?
- [37:48]
B
I mean, Sierra Leone, the district coordination centers. I mean, those were just. Those ran so well. And everyone that was in the districts, like, talked about them and worked out of them and, you know, just the work that we had to get just to have them have power and Internet. Because it's not like setting up things in cities in Nigeria where you're like, you're connected to an urban environment. These were much harder, much more complicated.
- [38:11]
A
And the 117, getting that whole.
- [38:12]
B
Yeah. And getting the whole line and the call center to work so efficiently, I thought was pretty great. That was a big win. And I mean, similarly in guinea was the same thing. I mean, the call center really drove a lot of the response was coordinated out of the call center that we managed.
- [38:27]
A
What about in Liberia? The contact tracing was probably a big one.
- [38:30]
B
Yeah, the contact tracing that worked out really well. The eventual eoc, but also the county centers as well. I mean, those really, like, you know, granted, with all the complications, did provide, like, kind of a focal place to at least. At least get data back about what was happening on a daily basis as opposed to. It was, like, kind of coming in, like, weekly before that. So it helped, like, really pinpoint how things were changing because, like, with the lag in data, they kept, like, building these treatment centers. And then by the time the data came in, you'd see that the numbers were down in that county and the infection's actually in this county now. But they've already spent U.S. government just put together U.S. military or someone, you know, one of the NGOs, built a treatment center and they couldn't track how things were moving. So the counties really helped with that, knowing where things were happening.
- [39:11]
A
And I think the work that we did, even just in getting health workers paid and just, like, random people paid, like, at one point we were paying, like, the burial teams and the ambulance drivers and stuff like that. And I think that was a huge thing that could have completely stopped the responses in both countries. Yeah. So I think that was actually a pretty big win to get. I mean, you know, to get people who are really doing a lot of really terrible work paid for the work that they were doing. And I know not. I know not everybody got paid, you know, in the end, but at least some of them did.
- [39:38]
B
Exactly. I mean, I think a big missing part that, you know, what we pitched early on was the fact that, like, yes, coordination's great, infrastructure is great, all that stuff's great, but, like, someone needs to manage the money because that's when things stop. And if the money's not going out, things aren't getting done. And having that pitch early on that we would be the kind of fiscal agent for a lot of those activities was a really good idea. And it's something that, like, just keeps declining, you know, with, like, the EOCs that they're rolling out here, the public health EOCs, again, yes, they have a building. Yes, they have Internet. But, like, when there's an outbreak, there's no money to pay for fuel, to pay for people, to pay for these things. And so it's still like that missing piece is that that financial management, which is just everyone kind of ignores.
- [40:16]
A
Or again, who says that they have the mandate to do it but don't do it.
- [40:19]
B
Yeah.
- [40:20]
A
So, all right, we haven't started talking about guinea because that's a Whole conversation on its own. So let's start with Amer. He came in to help us, and then maybe just walk through the issue with CDC and kind of what ended up happening.
- [40:33]
B
Well, that didn't happen for a while. Like, things went really well with Amer there because one, he could really get the teams together. Like, he could. All the stuff we were supposed to do, the hiring, the coordination, the procurement. Like, we got teams that could actually get the stuff done. And he had a really good relationship with all the CDC team members that were coming in. And we had set up something. Yeah, because we were setting up the coordination centers and we had the national one, which I think was in progress because it took him a long time to decide what they wanted to do. So we. We eventually got that started and then there was the call center. But for the call center, we'd hired the staff. We didn't have the team to kind of hire 100 and something people because the guinea call center was much bigger. So we ended up getting some help from one of the telecom companies again on how to set it up and how to do it. And one of them had recommended, like, a staffing. This young guy that had the staffing agency. And so this guy went out and recruited and we gave him like a. He did a good job. Like, we gave him a whole criteria for vetting it. But then we were doing the same thing because we were asked to then do another one. And I think in Zakori or somewhere, like, there are two other ones they wanted to do out kind of deep, kind of inland. And we had talked to people that were familiar with those areas, and we got recommendations about how to staff that. But, yeah, this woman who's the coordinator for the response in guinea became really good friends with that guy who did the staffing for us in Conakry and was like, I want him to do the staffing for these other centers. I decided that's not how this works. Like, you tell us what you need and we sort it out. Like, we can't hire based on, like, you telling us to hire. That's not how this. This has worked. That's not how it worked in any of the other countries, you know, up until that point. And then she was like, fine, and, like, left the meeting, was like, I'll take care of myself. And then from that day that she left that office, every single day, she filed some complaint about either our staff, the team, or myself, accusing us of. Of all kinds of stuff. Everything from, like, corruption in the procurement of laptops because we didn't get enough quotes from there, only being one certified HP dealer. So that's where we bought everything from. And you know, to the claiming the national EOC wasn't up to fire code and threatening to sue us for it, only for them to bring in the facilities guy who then certified everything that was fine. And just on and on, it just never stopped. And we kept having to have these kind of like sessions with the Atlanta team on like what was going on and they kept sending people to investigate and audit and do whatever. And I just, yeah, it was a never ending bombardment to the point where then, then she became close with the new response coordinator. I forget what his name was. And then she then realized she wasn't getting like CDC wasn't biting and wasn't going to fire us and CDC foundation wasn't biting and wasn't going to fire us. Yeah, then she did everything possible to get eha like kicked out of the country. And that was like her, her one goal. Like she literally stopped managing the response and focus solely on getting us kicked out of the country. And yeah, just never kind of came back from that. But then the work kept coming because World Food Program came in and was paying for a bunch of stuff and they wanted us, they gave us money I think, or maybe, I don't know, through somewhere but, but all the other groups kept coming in and praising everything that we're doing. This is great. Blah, blah stuff. And so like, you know, it was this kind of weird contradiction where everyone's like, wow, this is amazing, this is great. Everything's going super great. And then the other half of the day is just being attacked by this one lunatic woman and by, you know, getting complaints from the government. Yeah, there was, yeah, there was some other weird thing where she tried to get the government to arrest somebody for illegally drilling a borehole or something like that.
- [43:50]
A
Oh yeah.
- [43:50]
B
Only to find out like the person that was drilling the borehole was from the Ministry of Water Resources and like they showed up to arrest him and that water was for the EOC anyway.
- [43:58]
A
And looking back now just out of curiosity, I mean like again, you know, it was the middle of emergency response, you were younger and maybe not as diplomatic, diplomatic as you are today. Looking back, do you think to yourself like I could have done something different or like maybe I was actually kind of a jerk at the time or are you like no, this was.
- [44:18]
B
No, I mean, because I remember very specifically the conversation, like I said, we talked about this before because Amer was very much of the sort of like, let's just do what she wants. And I was like, that's just crossing so many lines. Like our relationship is, they decide what the problem is, we propose how to fix it and if they disagree with how we propose to fix it and they think there's a better way to do it, then we have a conversation about that. We don't just take orders to hire her friend's company. The only thing that I probably would have done differently is not go to guinea in the first place. I think, you know, yes, that conversation could have gone better. Yes, whatever. But I think at the end of the day we should have just now gone to guinea because that woman was unhinged. And like, even if that day we walked out and just said, yeah, whatever, we'll hire them to do whatever, even if we did it that day, there'd be something else later and something else later and something else later because she really saw herself as the queen ruler supreme of that country. Yeah. And it wasn't ever going to get better.
- [45:08]
A
And that's incredibly unfortunate because I think if you look at some of the big wins just for guinea, because we haven't talked about those yet. I mean like we did some really cool stuff in that country. I mean, how many like modern save the art health facilities did we end up ended up actually building? It was just. It was the two, right?
- [45:23]
B
No, it was eight.
- [45:24]
A
Was it eight? I mean, and they were gorgeous health facilities. It's still a little bit like, I don't really know why we did that, but like why they paid us money to do that.
- [45:36]
B
It was Paul island, right?
- [45:37]
A
Yeah, I mean, but again still through CDC foundation. So for whatever reason they decided that they needed us to build health facilities, which we did. And they were gorgeous. They were really well made health facilities that now the country has after that response and yeah. Can you think of any other big wins in that country?
- [45:52]
B
I mean not, not anything in particular.
- [45:54]
A
But I mean I do think anyways we did, you know, and again the eoc, one of the benefits was it was not a prefab building, it was their government building which they, you know, took over and are able to use now. I know they're still using it because we did the EOC in Guinea as well for polio, but we didn't do the national one. We ended up doing one in, in another province because they already had the national eoc. So I mean that alone to me I think is really cool, you know, that that's still functioning. And they were like, no, we don't need one here. Let's use the money someplace else. So, you know. Yeah, it was. It was some good work that we did there.
- [46:25]
B
Yeah, Well, I mean, true. But I. Like I said, either we should have not gone in the first place, I think, because we would have just done a better job in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Yeah, I think we would have got more products, probably would have been more profitable as an organization, but we would just, like, gotten more of our stuff done. I think we'd probably have a contract tracing app that's still being used, you know, that could have been used for Covid, you know, if we would just had the team to focus more on getting some of those tools developed.
- [46:49]
A
Any other, like, big lessons learned? Like, if you have to do it over again, what you would have done differently other than not go to Guinea?
- [46:55]
B
Well, I mean, I was gonna either not go to guinea or as soon.
- [46:57]
A
As we finish the EOC leave.
- [46:59]
B
Yeah. Or as soon as things went poorly with that woman, just be like, you know what? It's not working out of things. Because even we had to fight to get guinea added to the coag. And it's like, why did we do that? We should have just closed because that.
- [47:11]
A
At the time, they needed us. And I think that, you know, we were very much more driven by, like, you know, wanting to actually help stop the Ebola. Right. So we were like, if we leave now, the call center is going to collapse. And the call center is a huge aspect of the freaking response, you know? And again, if guinea fell, so was Sierra Leone and Liberia. You know, they would have all fallen together. Yeah, I think. I don't think that we were necessarily thinking with our brains in that. I mean, it was much more thinking about it with, like, our hearts. So.
- [47:41]
B
Yeah.
- [47:42]
A
Other idea. Other things looking back that you wish you would have done differently.
- [47:46]
B
Not that I can think of.
- [47:48]
A
Yeah. I mean, it's like, looking back, I mean, there's tons of things that I think that we could have done differently. I wish that we had been able to do differently from, like, the management and organization side of things. But, like, I think looking back, we did the best that we freaking could. You know, I think that there was only so much that could get done when you're talking about scaling at that level and the emergency response, I think we really.
- [48:08]
B
So the other thing, I guess, would be, like, you know, the amount of money that we spent on, like, the informatics team just got out of hand. And, you know, it was just software team. It was based in Berlin. Things were going really well, for a bit. But then the team just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And if you look at it like, none. We don't use any of those tools anymore.
- [48:22]
A
Yeah.
- [48:22]
B
And it's like. So we just kind of got talked into building all these things that were a bit useless. And we could have just been using odk. Right. I mean, we could have just, like, the call center tools, one could have been developed better. So we just had the wrong team. They wanted to build, you know, new technology things as opposed to building something.
- [48:36]
A
That worked or just paying for freaking commercial software.
- [48:39]
B
Yeah, that would have done. Yeah, that would have done the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that was a big mistake. And then that's probably millions of dollars that we could have been.
- [48:46]
A
It's not probably. It was millions of dollars. Yeah.
- [48:49]
B
That could have gone into something more useful and more. More of a kind of a global good. Like, it'd be great if we had an offline, capable call center app, you know, and it just wasn't built in a way that would make it work.
- [48:59]
A
Yeah. And looking back, you know, the amount of money that we spent on infrastructure, I think in building in those countries, around our country offices and stuff like that, you know, if we had. I think at the time, we had thought that we would stay in those countries for a long time, so we thought, like, you know, let's spend the money. But looking back, it's so frustrating because, again, it was probably a million dollars that we lost from the facility renovations that we did in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
- [49:27]
B
Yeah.
- [49:27]
A
So, yeah, lessons learned on that. But I also just think, like, you know, if we had known then what we wanted to be today, I mean, we would have made so many different decisions. And, you know, yes, we can look back, but I just don't know how we would have known those things at that time. You know, I think that we were really just doing the best that we could, so. And at the end of the day, I don't think that we did badly, you know, but, yeah, sure, we could have done things differently. Well, two more things left to talk about, and I don't want to end on a negative note, but I do want to answer this question. Worst moments from the Ebola response, what were your top.
- [50:03]
B
Well, I mean, a lot of those fights with that woman were pretty bad.
- [50:05]
A
Yeah.
- [50:06]
B
Like, epically bad. I mean, the other worst moments were just early on in Sierra Leone when the cases were spiking because people were, like, dropping off like babies. Like, you know, when we set up the command center in the western urban. When the treatment centers were full, like, they were just like bringing them, you know, to the command center. That was pretty awful. Just having those are pretty bad memories.
- [50:25]
A
Yeah, sounds terrible. I think for me, probably worst moment by far, probably one of my worst moments in my career so far was having to fire the entire guinea staff. That was pretty of an experience. You know, at the end of the day, I'm proud of myself for the way that I did it and, you know, but it was still a pretty, pretty awful experience. Okay, so to end this out Ebola free, do you remember where you were and like the experience of when we finally got, you know, kind of certified Ebola free? I actually don't, you know, I don't really either, which is the sad thing. I remember.
- [51:01]
B
I just remember that music video that was made.
- [51:02]
A
Oh, that was adorable. I loved that. I forgot about that. That was really, really wonderful.
- [51:08]
B
I don't think I was in either of the countries. I just, I was definitely back, back in Nigeria.
- [51:13]
A
I think I was in Sierra Leone. And each country was a little bit different, but it was right around the same time. I want to say March was when it was. But yeah, I don't really remember either because remember, we had a couple, like, false starts of like, we thought. I think it was like right before Christmas one year we thought it was Ebola free and then we weren't. Yeah. So I think, like.
- [51:33]
B
Well, because remember there was an election in guinea and so the country was going to be Ebola free before the election and then it was magically. And then it wasn't Ebola free right after the election. I think those who declaration celebrations, even like with the polio ones, like, I just never take stock in them because who is so useless?
- [51:49]
A
I don't know though, because, like, the polio 1 was three years later. You know, we're. I mean, we already talked about this. We're pretty sure we're polio free and like, I feel like I was able to enjoy that win much more. But, like, I think at the point that Ebola was declared finished, one, we weren't so sure that that was actually what it was. And two, we were exhausted. But yeah, I almost think it's sad that we didn't actually get to like, nobody really celebrated it as much as we probably all should have.
- [52:17]
B
Yeah. Just as a team, I mean, I think the coordination teams, like in the countries definitely celebrated. There were definitely parties, but I was there.
- [52:23]
A
I don't remember any anyways, I guess that's not actually a very uplifting note to end on. Sorry. Okay, well, I think maybe we'll need to come back at some point to talk a little bit more in more detail about some of the things that happened during Ebola. But at least that was a good summary. Everything that happens. High level. Yeah. All right.
- [52:43]
B
All right.
- [52:43]
A
Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the EHA Founders Podcast. Please like and subscribe on your podcast app or on YouTube channel so that you can be updated as soon as we post our next videos. Thanks so much. Bye.