Will Russia and America Break Europe Apart?

So Parliament's back today.

So we've been on recess for the last few weeks while we've had all of our party conferences.

So Hass, what have you been up to?

So I've been focusing a lot on infectious disease recently, and we do a lot of work on polio eradication.

Polio, as you know, Mike, is only in Afghanistan and Pakistan in terms of the wild spread of the virus and infection.

I remember when we

were there, they used to have ceasefires for a couple of days when we were there, so the vaccination teams could travel around.

And both the Afghan government and the Taliban and the international forces all agreed for a couple of days they would just stop while everyone went into the polio vaccination.

Which is great that that happened, but it's still not been scaled up across the country enough to end cases of polio.

So we do a lot of work on that.

But also, of course, everyone's really interested in this Russian plague case because plague is exciting because it wipes out half of Europe because it came from a lab and everyone's terrified that that's where COVID came from.

And because Russia is this big, scary threat.

But actually, in my world, you know, the world of pandemic disease prevention, the real story is Ebola.

we are now in the midst of our biggest ever outbreak of Ebola.

There's been something like 8,000 cases, 4,000 deaths, a terrifying death rate.

And that's all happening in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

That's why you're not seeing it so much in the news.

So there's a real inequality of interest in the deaths of individual people.

And we'd be wrong to think that what happens in sub-Saharan Africa doesn't affect us.

We're probably at more threat certainly here in London from an Ebola case coming to our shores than a case of plague right now from Russia.

But just in terms of human death, I mean, it's an extraordinary number of people who are dying from Ebola right now in Congo.

And it's something to be proud of as a Brit, because Britain has done a lot of work on Ebola vaccines that can actually help the situation.

Africa is criminally underreported.

There's a war between Ethiopia and Tigray at the moment that has 600,000 deaths.

I mean, it's just not in the news.