i was a young doctor in africa when aids hit. i saw how it could devastate populations. i also saw how first responders, doctors, nurses and health care workers make the difference. infectious diseases are a global threat. the unseen enemy is a compelling, urgent film that urges the important conversation about what we can all do to protect our families from these diseases. >> hello, good morning. >> it's 5:00 a.m. in the east. let's start. >> good morning.

>> i think -- >> the centers for disease control today issued a health warning following a worldwide outbreak of a mysticous form of few monia. >> people have come down with sars. [ speaking foreign language ] >> the world health organization has declared a swine flu pandemic. >> spread of the h1n1 swine flu. >> it cannot be contained. >> i think we can contain spread -- >> the pan deppics must be taken seriously. >> a big outbreak of a deadly ebola virus has broken out. >> in the african country has spread. >> people know nothing. there's no cure.

>> they don't have the resources -- >> governments around the world are calling for new measures. >> another case of bird flu. >> it's critical that they control this. >> you have to respond to the challenge. >> three latest victims of the new respiratory virus called mers has come from middle eastern countries. they believe it originated in bats or camels. >> rapid kidney failure. >> as the zika virus continues to threaten people across the globe -- >> a link to bird flu. >> transmitted by mosquitoes. >> when if weather warms up -- >> i believe there's such a thing as being too late. >> there's a concern -- [ speaking foreign language ].

>> our home. you can almost hear the biological chatter. >> aids, zika virus. >> contagious -- >> just when technology and science was supposed to make us safer, we suddenly seem more vulnerable to outbreaks. >> whether we like it or not, our world is globalizing ever more. that's not only true for markets and production, but it's also true for behaviors, for diseases. so we're more vulnerable because of our mobility and we're living in crowded cities.

that's fantastic from the perspective of a virus because in no time, it can infect hundreds of thousands of people. >> there have been about 30 newly emerged diseases that have the potential to become pandemics. if we do nothing, it's not a matter of if there will be a global pandemic. it's just a matter of when and which virus and how bad. >> the world changes around us at increasing speed. we caused a lot of that change. migrating to cities, stripping the earth of its resources and alterring prime evil jungle. >> we are seeing whole entire ecologies, that which you can see with your eye and that which you can see only with a microscope. >> one system after another

completely reshaped. >> is there a sense -- >> in every case, this affords opportunities for viruses and bacteria to seek out new homes, cause new havoc, including disease for human beings. >> when contagion happens, life alters in an instant. we don't feel safe. we lose trust. >> it spreads very quickly when you have an infectious disease outbreak. people know what's happening in another part of the world so much more quickly, so much more vividly than ever before, so the contagion of fear moves faster than the contagion of the disease itself and the fabric of society starts to deteriorate. >> there's something that destroys the soul of a community that happens when an epidemic is out of control.

it's not just the large number of casualties and the deaths, which are itself unthinkable, but it's what it does to the social fabric of a community, of a nation. >> the war lasted for 14 years. i was quite little but i still remember vividly everything i saw. sometimes in a place where it is dark, you can see the bullets flying, like bolts of lightning

across the sky. a fire will bundle all of us and we hear the opposite direction. huh? you know the bullets are coming this way because you hear the sound coming. huh? and you see the soldiers going that way to go and fight it, so you know you have to go the other way. a look at ebola. how you going to protect yourself? you have an enemy you cannot hide from. you cannot run from ebola. where are you going to go? who are you going to run to?

i got information yesterday that the ebola virus is here. >> ebola is transmitted through bodily fluids, saliva, blood, urine, feces. >> ebola first surfaced in west africa in a rural community. but this ebola outbreak didn't say in the countryside. the virus quickly found its way to the region's largest cities and health systems that were completely unprepared. >> i graduated from nurse school two years ago. the reason why i'm here is quite different because i was the only one available.

i'm a general practitioner and i got one day training to get prepared for this. we started our mission. the following morning there were ambulances lined up at our gates and we were not prepared. before we even knew it, we already were overwhelmed with so many patients. >> have a nice visit. i will take one or two.

>> i got that impression i was in hades, because it was a makeshift structure. the patients are vomiting, bleeding and having diarrhea on the floor and two or three patients have already died, bodies were still there. in three days time, the entire unit was full. meanwhile, there was still patients, and they are begging every time. every time you go to the gate they are begging to come in. we have 35 beds and we have one patients only one. that means patients lie on the floor. you don't have beds but you facing a group of people who are dying. you know they're dying. you see they're very sick. they are so weak.

what if they go home? what if a taxicab these patients are going to go home to die. every one of the taxicabs are infected. and what about the homes, the communities the people go into. maybe we should just open the gate and let them come in and lie on the floor to die. so we just open the gate and just let them in, sometimes 20 persons. and they will we will be to three, four, five hours, trying to give them fluids and antibiotics and other medicines. and then it never ends. as you are walking out a new patient is walking in. and then when you go home and come back the following morning,

there are seven, eight dead for one night. >> i think we all underestimated. i know that one case of ebola is an emergency. every new case can give rise to more cases. so it's really act now or pay later. >> right now, the world health organization and other doctors are saying it is out of control in this area of west africa. it's the worst outbreak ever they've recorded in this part of the world. >> it's unprecedented for several reasons, one, it's the first in west africa. second, it's the first time

that three countries are involved. and thirdly, it's the first time we have outbreaks in a capital city. >> this is a mega crisis. >> i think so. >> i really thought how can this epidemic be controlled in the usual way whether there are so many outbreaks different places? the three countries in west africa that are affected by the ebola outbreak have some of the worst health indicators in the world. there are not enough doctors. there are not enough nurses. it is a system that is understaffed, underfunded, and where the infrastructure is very, very old. >> let's go back to 1976 when you were a younger man and you actually co-discovered this virus. it was in zaire. >> yes. >> now the democratic republic

of the congo. >> and they said it was a mystic out epidemic, it was very he lethal, high mort at. there were nuns who had died. a small group would go to the mission where the epidemic had started, apparently. they asked for volunteers and i think i was about the first one to raise my hand. although i had absolutely zero experience in doing this. [ speaking foreign language ] >> our mission was to -- one, to put in place some basic measures to contain it and using quarantine. that's what we thought, and, two, to find out how is this transmitted. because that's the key to stop epidemics, to know exactly what the risk is, how is it transmitted. it's really detective work.

so we tested whole villages, talked to the population, and then have a very primitive questionnai questionnaire, how old, where have they been and what we found is that there were very few survivors and that the case fatality rate was over 90%. nearly all new viruses come from animals. we are you a primates.

during the outbreak we started collecting samples from all kinds of animals. i even took bloods in pigs because a number of pigs had died at the beginning of the he said deppic, you never know. but we didn't find any trace of ebola. my boss at the time had always told me, watch out for the bats. and it became a bit of a joke, but the old man was right, because the only reservoir that we think were ebola is hiding are some kind of fruit eating bats. >> when i was a child i really liked to read all these science fictions. i reize science is rae fantasy. you can find something new. this is why i'm working on if emerging or reemerging bacteria and viruses.

i think from ebola, when you put all the data together, transmission, rules or cycle, it's clear. so definitely, it's from bats. and then you have intermediate host. it could be some mammals, either -- and then i could also be directed from bats to humans. you can see. ebola, sars and mers are all from bats, so they're a very serious problem. >> if we look around the world, you can see that bat populations are being severely stressed by climate change. some of them because they live in the upper tiers of rainforests and feed on wild fruit, but the upper tiers of

rainforests are getting the biggest impact of the heat increase and increase of uv radiation. add to that that humans are encroaching into the forests. bats are shy reaches. they do not seek you out no matter what vampire movies you've seen. we see more and more bat populations starving and coming into human habitation areas to feed on our agricultural production. in the process, they're passing their virus on to other animals and to humans. we are imposing changes in the microbial world willy-nilly, thoughtlessly and we do so at our peril. >> we have dramatically increased our contact with animals in a variety of ways.

through deforestation, industrialization of agriculture, and vastly increased consumption of animals. hiv spread out of africa from a few monkeys and chimpanzees to affect millions of people on every continent. sars jumped from a bat to a cat to a person to countries in a matter of a few weeks. in the 21st century, 75% of all new infectious diseases have come from animals. sometimes directly. in other cases through intermediaries like mosquitos. j if anyone had sat down and done a fantasy hit parade of emerging diseases that might come to the americas from africa

or from asia, zika would never even have been on the list. zika virus originated in africa and had never been off the african continent until it started making its way across asia and south pacific, ending up in french polynesia and, yap. yap is a small place that most people have never heard of but when zika hit it, 70% of the population got infected. that was really quite startling. if anybody had been paying attention. >> but they weren't. zika jumped from the south pacific to brazil? 2013, two years before it was identified there. the timeline corresponds to an increase in travel between the south pacific and brazil. including visitors who attended a preworld cup soccer tournament, the confederation

cup. >> scoooore! >> someone was carrying the zika virus and some individual got bitten and absorbed the virus. that's the beginning of the saga. and then undoubtedly, the el nino weather event provided the necessary ingredients, rainfall and drought that fundamentally changed the conditions on the ground and allowed for the spread of this virus. >> come, come, come. [ speaking foreign language ]

[ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ]

[ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ]

[ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ] >> in 2015, the zika virus suddenly spread across brazil, primarily through the bite of one type of mosquito. the medical establishment only began to comprehend zika's danger as the number of babies born with the defect microcephaly started to dramatically increase. [ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ]

[ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ]

[ speaking foreign language ] since the alarm went sounding around the world from be still, we have seen almost every day another revelation about this virus. what we now know is that this is a slow dangerous virus. we grossly underestimated it. it is malaria in that it is transmitted by mosquitos and can cause enormous outbreaks. it is hiv in that it is sexually transmitted and it is worst than all the above as we come to understand what this virus actually lives on. where does the virus go in a pregnant woman? it goes into this tiny forming

baby, the fetus and it feeds on it and reinfects back into the mother's bloodstream over and over again. and what is it feeding on in that fetus? baby brain cells. and so every single part of the brain of that developing child is damaged. >> the zika virus affects its victims in a completely different way from the ebola virus. what they share in common is how fast they can move. randomly attacking some, while sparing others. some epidemics grab our attention while others, in spite of the larger number of victims, remain more hidden.

>> it's so close. welcome. >> owatonna, minnesota. it's a beautiful town. to me, it's like mayberry, rfd, opie taylor's town. the chief brought a sick princess here because of healing waters. >> when we moved here it just felt like home. i think we got lucky. the good lord just gave us two good kids. sarah was always the princess. shannon was opposite. she was a tomboy. she loved skate boarding. and she loved video games. >> shannon, she was a complete

surprise. >> shannon. >> sarah was almost 16 and i was 40. she was a joy right from the get-go, she was a joy for everybody. >> we were a tight family. >> first time out by herself. oh, my gosh! >> when she got her permit, she was so tickled. >> she goes by herself. >> i was so proud of her. >> oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh. somebody's driving. that a girl. oops. oh, hi. >> she was in her senior year of high school, she came home wednesday night, said i think i got the flu at school. that was wednesday. >> and thursday she didn't seem

to be, you know, baseline for being sick. but she wasn't getting better. and that's when terry and i agreed we've got to take her. >> when i took her that sunday to go to the hospital. we waited two hours. it was that packed. that's when i knew there was a big epidemic of flu going on. she's sitting next to me, she's got her head on me. i took a selfie, sent it to her mom, said we're still waiting. >> the doctor said it was the flu, it had to run its course. they gave her some cough medicine just for comfort. terry went and got it. while i got her back into bed. [ texting sounds ]

>> it's about 5:00 in the morning. i was sitting in the living room and i heard her moving around upstairs. i thought, wow, she's getting out of bed. i got up and i went to the coffee maker and i saw my peripheral that she got up and went to the bathroom. she tapped on the shower curtain and i said you want to take a shower and she nodded yes. i said ok. i was filling the water and it got so full. she laid back and her knees kept buckling. she kept pushing on the end of the tub to keep herself from sliding under it. then i saw her eyes and -- [ sighs ]

i pounded on the was and woke terry up. >> said she's not breathing and i come running down and i still remember her on the floor, mom giving her cpr. >> i'd never had to do that before and it's not like they teach you in class. >> all i could do is dial 911. [ telephone ringing ] >> 911. what's going on there no. >> my daughter's 17 years old. >> she's not breathing! >> she's not breathing. >> not breathing? >> stay on the line with me. hold on. >> please! oh, lord. come on in. she's right in there. go ahead. >> i just remember a pair of blue pants that kneeled down on the other side of her and he told me they'd take over and i stepped away. >> even when they said we're

flying her to rochester, i waved at the helicopter, thinking everything's fine. i had no clue. [ machines beeping ] [ steady tone ] >> when they said she didn't make it and i said i want to see her. they said you'd never recognize her from what we've had to do to her. the flu killed her organs long before she actually died. i still think she ought to be coming home.

>> the biggest pain in the world as a parent is losing their child. this is the most unnatural thing to happen to a human being, and you stand next to it and you think my goodness, i am there to prevent this from happening and sometimes i cannot. and sometimes i don't know why i cannot. >> the question of how and why one particular person may die from influenza is the million dollar question that we need to tackle. >> it is surprising how much we need to learn about flu, a disease that causes worldwide epidemics every year. >> she had a little raspiness in her chest. >> it came back positive.

i remember saying ok. it's no big deal. it's just the flu. >> it hospitalizes three to five million. >> within 24 hours she was intubated. >> killing at least 200,000 every year. >> we went in as they were coding her. >> my baby girl scarlett pronounced dead. >> the majority of the adult influenza have something called a risk factor. they have a weak immune system or diabetes or a pregnant woman having a risk for both themselves as well as the child. we know these factors. but this is a virus that can mess up your body to degree that even the most healthy young unhappy playful person is taken away from this planet in a

couple of days. >> every year, we struggle to fight seasonal flu. but what experts are really afraid of is a new strain of flu. one that the human population hasn't been exposed to before. one that almost no one will have any immunity against.

only when you are, when you really want to know, when you're so fascinated by the virus, or by a problem, only then you forget about everything and you just continue. >> the goal is we want to make a vaccine to prevent hiv, to prevent hiv infection, to prevent aids. we have people in u.s. and people in africa and asia also cooperating with us. hundreds and hundreds. hundreds of people. sometimes i am afraid. things can go faster. infectious diseases, they take

the plane, they are everywhere. you really want to surprise, yeah, create surprise so that it cannot be transmitted anymore. we need to be more smart than nature to beat it. >> i definitely would like a better world. and i want try to do something useful for it. so that's -- i think it's also impacted by having kids, so more and more that's something you want to give them something better at the end of the day. >> when we think about the threat of a disease spreading around the world as a pandemic threat, obviously airborne infections are at the very top. things like sars and flu are

something that we know is difficult to control because of the way it spreads through aerosols. most people become infectious with the flu before they even have symptoms. anybody can travel clearly across the world with an infectious disease incubating in them without them even knowing that they're sick yet. >> in 2009, a new flu emerged, h1n1. also known as swine flu. we now know it first appeared in the u.s. in the pig industry, initially infecting people at state and county fairs. in a little over a year, swine flu infected around 1.3 billion people. it was the most common shared

experience on earth. flu poses a great pandemic threat because it has the ability to be very contagious and very deadly. >> what we're most worried about right now is this bird flu that we know is highly pathogenic. >> kills between 50 and 60% of the people it infects. >> currently, this deadly new bird flu doesn't spread easily between people. but it is spreading rapidly among wild birds and poultry.

experts are afraid this could be a pandemic threat. >> it's a live poultry market, so the birds are alive. they're sold alive because people value the fact that it's very fresh meat. so you buy your chicken or your duck alive and then it is killed and cleaned, emptied, of course. eviscerated. the viscera go into some of these buckets here and then the birds are put in hot water and then put in these drums where these plastic tubings help get rid of the feathers. and then when the birds have been defeathered, eviscerated and cleaned, they're cut up and given back to the person who bought it. the issue here is that the water is the same to clean all the

ducks and chickens. the other issue is that these people are wading in viscera, feathers and the water that cleans them. so there's really a lot -- a lot of virus here. >> in 2011 when the pasteur institute started monitoring the wash water, 18% of the water samples were positive for h 5 n 1. four years later, 66% of samples were positive. >> we know that bird flu is very, very deadly. and we know swine flu spreads very quickly. what we worry about is that if those two reabsorb and we could have a new strain that could spread as quickly as the swine flu did but have the mortality rate of the bird flu. that's the big fear. that we've now literally created the petri dish that we were worried about and both viruses

are sitting in there at the same time. >> pandemics are one of the biggest risks we face. >> this is an issue of human lives. it should be thought of in the same way that we think of terrorism, protection against national disasters against national defense. this is a human security issue and it is also an economic security issue. >> the ute break of sars could trigger a global downturn. >> fear of the sars virus has caused serious financial damage to businesses, cities, even entire countries. >> at the height of sars, nobody was going to restaurants. people didn't want to go shopping. at one point, retail sales were down by 50% and travel to asia was down. estimates of the impact of sars

have been an economic impact of 40 billion or so. if a global pandemic took place, you're looking at an economic impact measured in the trillions of dollars, not 10s or hundreds of billions. it has such a big impact on business and life. >> you hope the world has the capacity to see an outbreak, mobilize forces, and contain it. right? unfortunately, we rarely do that. especially if the outbreak occurs in a poor country. >> well, here we are in liberia. that's sierra leone and there's the border crossing. do you see security, do you see military? do you see anyone who would stop

someone coming across this border? not only does it spread across the borders of the original country as occurred with ebola in west africa, but it crosses seas. it crosses continents and that constitutes a pandemic. endemic is your worst-case scenario. so you fail to control the outbreak, you fail to control the epidemic and you fail to control the pandemic, and now that microbe is a permanent feature in the biological landscape that humans are living in. the worst example of that is hiv. we started off with tiny outbreaks in a handful of places and the world responded completely incorrectly. it became pandemic and now endemic, so we have 37 million people living infected with hiv and there is no country on the

planet without this virus. >> before the devastation of aids, there was smallpox. smallpox killed 500 million people in the 20th century alone. more than all the wars in that century combined. whenever an infectious disease truly catches hold, it forces health workers to make impossible choices about the public's freedom and rights. >> i was the youngest person in the smallpox team and i was certainly the only person in the history of the united nations recruited from the ali backa ashram. >> we had eradicated smallpox. a big state in the middle of india.

we were about to do our victory dance and suddenly across the border, we started getting new outbreaks. they all came from one place, a place called tatanagar. the first place we went was to the rail station. it was the scene from the worst nightmare you'd had in your life. there were dozens of people stretched out near the tracks, on the cement dead from smallpox. it smelled of death. the tatanagar was the home of the tatar iron and steel company. so i went to the company's house. it was almost midnight when i got there. i said i need jeeps, i need managers, i need doctors, i need vaccine. the next day i had a hundred jeeps. we set up training programs and used maps to develop strategy and took the hundred jeeps and built our little army.

we were doing great. we found 2,000 cases of smallpox. we were stopping the disease in tatanagar but still as we're vaccinating everybody, the trains were carrying people away. we were still exporting the virus. we quarantined the city of 600,000 people. nobody could leave the city unless they were vaccinated. we eliminated smallpox in that entire area around tatanagar in less than six months, but it kept coming back. we traced it to a tribal group called the ho tribe. so i went and visited the members of that tribe and i said, well, you've got to take smallpox vaccine. you've got to stop this

transmission. he said i won't take it. i do whatever god's will is if i'm to get smallpox, i'll get it. after a while, more cases kept coming out from the ho community and we all agreed that we were going to have so forcibly vaccinate these ho tribesmen. the middle of the night, we went out into the villages into the jungle and we surrounded them and pulled them out of their houses and we vaccinated them. and after we had broken into their house, pulled them out of bed, forcibly vaccinated them, this dignified tribal elder looked at me and reached over to the vine and there was one fruit, a cucumber, a kind of gourd.

he pulled it off and he cut it and he put it on a leaf and he offered it to us to eat. he said i don't like what you did. i think you're did. i think you're wrong. but that's over now. now i see that you are a guest in my house. so, you ask yourself, were we right? we did a lot of things that in their individual isolation, if i put the harshest truth on it right now. i would be begging to find an alternative way to do it. and i asked myself, did i exaggerate the importance of what i did? did i place myself above a moral compass? did i quip too early to find a

way to accomplish the same thing? but that's sort of between, right now, me and god and me and my conscience. smallpox has been eradicated. and i'm thrilled about that. >> the idea of night raids or forcible vaccination today is just unthinkable. there's a few big things that are very different. internal politics, global politics, extremism, the whole issue of human rights.

you have to be transparent because the wrong information can actually contribute to the spread of the disease. i'm particularly interested in looking at rumors. the way that rumors replicate and spread are very similar to how viruses spread. they need a host, they need to be supported to stay alive and thrive. oh, there we are. okay. hi. rumors have been around since man existed. but i think right now what's changed with technology and particularly social media and the internet is the global spread and the speed. i mean, look at twitter. you needed 140 characters or something. and that's all you need to spread some of the rumors and perceptions that we're certainly tracking. and one of the things we found is that rumors thrive in times

of uncertainty. they thrive in times where people need an answer or are eager for an answer. >> the old model of how you respond to an infectious disease outbreak, is you issue some sort of firm warning to the public and tell them what they should and shouldn't go. that doesn't work anymore. people are responding to rumors on twitter or facebook and they want to engage and challenge and have their own opinions about what's going on. >> when an epidemic occurs, there is a clinical management and also the reaction of society. and managing that can be as important as actually dealing with the epidemic itself.

okay, good afternoon, everybody, this is our third meeting on the task force on ebola, because of where we are in the epidemic, i'm very worried, to be honest. >> the president likened the outbreak to a war. >> death continues to surge. >> riots are breaking out. >> as ebola continued to spread across west africa, the governments implemented massive quarantines. distrust exploded. >> security forces blocked roads with scrap wood and barbed wire. hundreds clashed with the police who fired live rounds and tear gas. >> liberia has tried, we have used our own resources. we have limitations. we hope this is seen as an international catastrophe. >> two americans who have been infected -- >> -- will be sent home for care

in atlanta. >> became infected while working as a nurse in eastern sierra leone. >> a news photographer for nbc just diagnosed with ebola. >> much like the other americans before him, he will be flown back to the united states for treatment. >> that's him? >> mm-hmm. >> oh, my god. he's from west africa, right? >> no, he's from the states. he's from here. he's from maryland. >> oh, my god. >> in a repeating pattern, the world only really started to pay attention to the ebola epidemic when foreign workers began to fall sick. >> the international response is continuing to ramp up. >> create an air bridge to get

health workers and medical supplies into west africa. >> over a billions euros across europe will be galvanized. >> china is sending healthcare professionals. >> there are 84 flights a week leaving these affected countries. >> the first time the ebola virus is in the united states. >> contracted ebola in liberia before flying to dallas, texas. >> he lied on his exit form so he could leave liberia. >> why not just shut down the flight and secure the border. >> a travel ban may make sense. >> we should not be allowing these folks in. >> period. >> as of today, one case came from liberia, one. there may be more, but right now, one. >> and in response to that, they say, let's close the borders, nobody from africa will be allowed in. they didn't even know where west or east or south africa is. nobody from africa should be

allowed in. and close our airports. that's a combination of ignorance and arrogance that could create -- >> please be advised that a health care worker that lives in your area has tested positive for the ebola virus. >> today, testing confirms a patient in new york city has tested positive for ebola. >> 12 hours before he detected his fever, he was in an uber car, he was on the "l" train, the "a" train, he was in a restaurant as no quarantine was required. late this afternoon the governors of new york and new jersey decided to change that. after returning from treating ebola patients in sierra leone, sandra hitchcock was quarantined, even though she tested negative for ebola twice. >> we have the legal authority

to do it, we're doing it. >> it was pretty clear that the united states epidemic was overwhelmingly an epidemic of fear. we got a practice run on how americans will respond. and, boy, we got an "f." >> we are spending a lot of time with a community. community leaders, would assess how to better handle this ebola epidemic. >> is this a wakeup call for you also the international community to start looking at all the potential viruses that may come to harm us as vulnerable as we

are, so that we start putting things in place to prevent us from getting these types of diseases? >> to be honest, in this 38 years, we have collectively failed, and every time there's a big epidemic, we put in place mechanisms to prevent that and it doesn't happen. so we really need to fight this ebola this time and there are better systems in place. >> in the fall of 2014, significant aid and manpower finally started arriving in the region. in liberia, there were contingents from france, china, cuba, germany, sweden and the united states.

>> this is an extrapolation. >> exactly. >> it was chaotic and coordination was often difficult. but makeshift etus were finally replaced with purpose-built field hospitals. >> i communicated with the ministry that jfk should close down. so just transfer them from jfk. >> you need to scrub and clean my office. i created something called a coordination team. good morning. yesterday i started getting

complaints. there were two patients that were brought to triage and they were lying in triage for more than an hour. i mean every patient that comes here think about your relative being in that position, you don't treat patients like that, you can't have patients waiting in triage for one hour before they get care. we need to be vigilant about it. i have seen so many people die and sometimes i'm afraid being a medical doctor. one laboratory technician working for us at jfk got infected. and my hygienist got into a physical fight before the patient became infected. then two securities got infected at home. after i joined jfk, three intern

doctors came and dr. scott land. dr. scotland wanted to work alongside me. and every time i was working for four or five hours, it was scotland that would stay, he was a perfect friend, a perfect colleague. one day he took the day off, and then that evening i called him to see how he was doing. he said, oh doc, you know what? i have fever and chills. i said keep it calm, come to the unit and we'll take a sample. that night his first inclination was to call me. he said doc, my results came

back positive. he started to cry, he started to shed tears. and i told him, i will do everything in my power to make sure you're okay. i will get an ambulance. and then i ask him to receive him and put him in and did everything i could do for him, i kept calling all through the night, i didn't get him, he didn't talk to me. the following morning, he just dropped and died. he just dropped and died. he just dropped and died. yeah. up until now, when i think about it, i feel like i've done nothing.

i mean, i didn't save scotland. ♪ ♪

♪ >> my whole family got ebola. eight died, two survived. after i survived, i voluntarily decided to give care to these children. hello, everybody. lunch is ready, we're going to have our lunch. these children are here because they have lost everything from

ebola and the community has a responsibility to take care of them. in taking care of these children, they are risking their lives. since we are survivors, we cannot infect them and we cannot get infected by them. so these children are brought here to be under quarantine. in entering the home, they can really, really be afraid. not wanting to talk to anybody, not wanting to share their problems. they don't know who to trust.

by time goes by, while talking to them, one-on-one, they start talking back to us. >> when ebola ends, everything is going to change, families are apart for good. my daughter is 4 years old. i called on my best friend in life, and my son is also very brilliant. because i was so afraid of them becoming infected, i had to stay away from them for a long while. people only see the deaths, but the consequences are far more

than that. in africa, we drink together, we drink from one cup, we share from one spoon and we eat from the same plate. see, ebola is not only killing us, it's destroying all of our cultures and traditions and reducing our hope for the future. >> i know we are talking about the prevention of the emerging virus, it's three factors, early identification, precision of diagnosis and immediate action. >> we're trying to find some small molecules or some anti-bodies that inhibit the ebola virus to enter the cells. >> the 21st century can be characterized by the advances, our only chances of winning the race is to use 20th century tools to fight epidemics or

ideally even to prevent them with vaccines. >> they have been with us for millions and millions of years in the world. we can ask some questions and find sought some useful information. >> viruss are bad, but in terms of research they provide the critical tools for our cells. they have been with us through millions and millions of years of evolution. if we can ask the right questions, maybe we can find out some useful information. we have surveillance projects, we have viruses from humans, from animals, from twine, that birds, finding out what are the mechanisms for spread. >> when you are talking about vaccine development, we knew even less for flu than we knew for the ebola.

so we need to have a universal flu vaccine soon, so everybody's working on that. >> can you tell me the slide that you have prepared? >> this is the slice. >> oh, yeah. >> currently we create a new flu vaccine every year, adjusting it to match the circulating streams of flu. it takes months to make that vaccine. >> yes, it looks quite nice. >> what scientists are trying to develop is a universal flu vaccine, one that could work against all strains of flu, seasonal and pandemic. >> right now it takes at least nine months to develop a vaccine, that's too much time. >> if there's a pandemic, a lot of people will die before a vaccine is ready. >> go this way? okay, goodbye, hope to see you soon. the problem is not just vaccines, we also need better diagnosis. >> better diagnostics are

critical to preventing outbreaks from becoming epidemics, we misidentify ebola. we lost valuable time to contain them. >> thank you, you have been identified. >> this is the area where we have a lot of the diagnostic machinery that we're working on. so the general idea is, your sample is going to get placed in here, and it will run across a chip. you close it up and then the cartridge can sit right here. right now the run time is somewhere in the order of half an hour. so what you can see on the screen here, this is the intact

virus, maybe it's ebola, maybe its influenza, maybe it's zika. you can imagine it being useful in your doctor's office, or in an airport, or you can imagine someone wanting to bring it to a triage site if there's some disaster or some outbreak. >> today the president of brazil gave public health officials the right to enter any home of business to try to eradicate mosquito breeding grounds. >> zika virus has been reported in chili. >> scientists are still trying to understand the full range of neurological effects zika causes in children and adults.

>> zika virus has been detected in the miami area. >> people are scared. cases rose from 4,000 to 16,000. >> can you imagine colleagues, the fear and anxiety in this chamber if these 100 mosquitoes were outside this jar not inside this jar. >> zika is a serious threat to americans. >> zika is spreading rapidly afternoon the world. >> we're already seeing mosquitoes transmitting zika in the united states. it's really just a question of how many states, how widespread, and how many people will acquire infection as a result? we are not prepared for zika.

every outbreak, we go to the capitol hill folks and beg, and every outbreak it becomes very political. in the united states, there are a patchwork of laws that guide health. there's no consistency and allows the public health department to go on your lawn, in your property to spray insecticide? in some cities yes, in some cities no. can i compel you to drain a swamp like condition in your yard because it's bringing mosquitoes? again, there's no consistent

law. public health is a two-way trust, i have to trust that government's going to do the job. but government can't do the job of public health unless the public is engaged. if government says mosquitoes are here, and they're carrying a really dangerous disease, we need to come on your property, we need to have access to ways to eradicate those mosquitoes and you say i believe in the second amendment, nobody's coming on my property, then there's no trust. and there's no public health. and similarly, if there's an epidemic, that involves a vaccine, government doesn't line your children up, you line your children up. and if you're not willing to do so, then you're not part of the trust that is the basis of public health. if there's one hallmark of my lifetime on this planet, it is the erosion of trust in

government. and public health is paying the price at every level for that erosion of trust. >> each year terry gets the vaccine. i don't get it. and we gave shannon the choice, and she chose not to. i'm trying to understand the flu vaccine because i want to know if we got shannon vaccinated if it might have saved her life. there's so much information on the internet, i can go to 30 different websites and get 30

different answers. you don't know who to trust. >> there's something about the flu vaccine that conjures confusion. while not currently a perfect tool, and varying in effectiveness from year to year, over the last decade, the flu vaccine reduces the risk of getting the flu by 50%, it also reduces hospitalizations and deaths. >> a little over a year ago, a mom that lost a little girl put together a facebook page and she titled it flu moms. and when she hears of another mom or somebody finds us, they join. here's a mom, she had a booth at a fair and all of our children were pictured. there's shannon. and when children came to the

booth to get their faces painted, then the parent standing there waiting would be told about these children who have died and the importance of vaccination and that kind of thing. we have a new mom. julia. how wonderful to be part of a flu mom group. but it's great that we all are here for one another. shoot. we'll learn her story pretty soon. >> there's a huge amount of parents who are just utterly confused. and that's a big communication challenge when it comes to the vaccine. the question is does she have anything now? >> yeah, she does. >> vaccine hesitancy is something we observe to be on the rise, which is quite alarming. influenza is possibly preventible with a vaccine, that's great, but nobody uses

it, that's not great. one of the most common misperceptions about the flu vaccine, say, you know, i'm healthy, i never get sick. the potential of me giving something to somebody that may be serious to them, even if it may not be serious to me at this moment. and i may very well sit in a subway next to somebody who has a very weak immune system. and they may not know it and i may not know it, but i may very well give somebody the flu. so there's the question of the common good versus the individual good. if we want any effectiveness of a vaccine, we need to get vaccinated.

>> the great influenza of 1918, that virus was said to have gone around the world four times without an airplane. that's 100 years ago now. at the end of the great influenza, 50 million or 100 million have died. that's against a global population at the time less than 2/7th of what it is today. multiply 50 mill on or 100 million by 3, you're talking about a number of deaths that's catastrophic, a hit to our economy that's unimaginable. in 2006 i brought the top thinkers from all over the world together. the vast majority felt that in

the next 20 years, 30 years, there will be a pandemic, and it will have the potential to bring humanity to its knees. >> new strains of influenza are already affecting birds in nearly 75 countries and the way we're interacting with the animal world is putting us at risk. we encroach on wet lands, so wild birds mix more frequently with domestic poultry, our food trade is completely globalized and our factories and farms are growing in scope and size. >> with all influenza, there's a critical moment when a virus is circulating in one species, let's say birds, manages to mutate in a form that allows it to get into, say, pigs, and then from there to spread easily between people. we have seen this over and over, it's going on all the time.

right at this moment. here's what a truly horrible worst-case scenario pandemic would look like. first there would be a jump from some animal species to humans. the first humans would be the people close to those animals. and then their families and the kids in the schools, and it would not be regionally confined for long at all. days, that's it. and let's assume that it kills 5% of the people it infects. well, 5% would be hundreds of millions of human beings. >> pandemic flu will soon reach this country. >> if you become sick while traveling, contact -- >> once the epidemic has really

begun to spread, you can't even begin to imagine the scale of this. from the city as possible.way >> huge numbers of people that e not coming to work, and that includes jobs we consider essential for public safety, like the guys that turn water systems on and off, the police, the fire department. then people start blasting their conspiracy theories out about where this disease came from, who caused it, why is it here? you will see a whole wave of shortages of goods and services all over the world, the stockouts of every single kind of drug, the overcrowding of hospitals, the overcrowding of the mortuaries, the sheer numbers of both sick and dying. what a really severe influenza pandemic would look like is something close to social collapse.

>> when not effectively prepared as a world for a pandemic, we don't have effectiveness coordination and response, but the biggest thing is that the underground preparation and preparedness is full of holes. there's a pattern here of responding to an outbreak rather than investing in preparedness. preparedness is so much cheaper, so much more cost effective than responding after the event has happened. >> major nations around the world currently spend 10 to 25 times less on biosecurity than they do on homeland security, in spite of the likelihood of an epidemic causing even greater loss of life. we are overdue for an influenza pandemic.

a lesser influenza pandemic would likely kill up to 2 million people. and influenza pandemic like 1918 could kill 200 million people, more than the entire population of germany, great britain and spain combined. to prevent pandemics, we need to do a much better job of controlling outbreaks. i think when a dart strikes

a country, you do see that people care. >> people are dying, we have to do something about this, we have something in development so we'll accelerate. it, i think it was really necessary for people, companies to step up and try to do something about this, because it was obvious, i think, to, well to the experts that this is not going to be just this outbreak, there's going to be more. biggest lesson really was that epidemics will come back, right? it will be ebola, it will be something else. but there will be another one. and so i think what the world has learned is that they have to be better prepared. i think you need the right players from the start. i think you need to have the public sector working very

closely together with the private sector. we need to join forces, really u from the sport to make things happen very, very quick. i care. and i think, yeah, i mean many people care, i mean we saw many people there that -- many women that were going to sierra leone to help in the fight. that was amazing to see that response from the world towards sierra leone. there's a huge sense of accomplishment when you do the right thing, when you see that what you do can potentially make a difference for those people.

good morning. we're seeing few patients now. the staff are better prepared now to work. they're more trained. i think if we're this prepared before august or september, we will be better. in december, we had 16, 17, patients admitted on the confirmed ward, and 14 of the 17 will go home soon. hello, baby. are you all right?

how are you doing today? so with time we got better. no sick or anything? no, you're ready to go today. how are you feeling? any vomiting? nothing. go home tomorrow. it's like a miracle, you see a patient and the patient is dying sick, and then two or three days onwards, the patient starts to regain strength, trying to grow and get stronger each day. and then the most exciting thing is that you put the patient out of the ward and you remove the tyvek and the patient sees you. the patient knows dr. moses as saved a person, but doesn't know

the person, and some of them start to cry. and i say, wow. it gives me joy. yeah. it gives me joy. ♪ ♪ >> good morning. every time we are able to help one person to stay alive and leave this hospital zone, they go home. now if this doesn't stop here, staying alive is a continuous challenge. so these certificates are so that you can go home and people in your community who are afraid

to come around you thinking you still have ebola, give this to you, this is some evidence from the minister of health, that you were tested and treated and now you are cured. okay? on behalf of the ministry of health, this certificate says that you have successfully undergone care and treatment related to ebola virus disease and after post treatment assessment, you are now declared free of ebola. you have been examined and confirmed in a negative laboratory test in 11th day of december, 2014. and it's signed by me on behalf of the minister of health. >> i want to present this certificate. emma. please talk to me. this is for you. take it from me now, baby. it's for you, yeah.

>> when i see patients, i remember them. yeah. especially those that are sick that were really sick, i remember that. there's something in each individual body that makes that person survive and another person won't survive. because you see one patient is so sick and that patient lives, you see another patient who is not so sick and that patient dies, you say why? what's the difference? i give them the same treatment, the same feeding, the same care. why?

>> when an outbreak catches hold, it affects every part of our lives. business and government, trust and freedom, equity and security. the fight against epidemics can

only be won if each of us does our part, it turns out we're all the front line. >> i think it goes on your left side. >> what if that's not where i want to wear it? >> tell him i got it. >> i created a procedure so that when people look themselves in the eye -- >> it was in this hall, 52 years ago that my life was forever changed, i felt i had been drafted into a different kind of army, the fight for human rights. in 1980, smallpox was declared eradicated from the world and so far it's the only human disease ever eliminated by a public campaign. can we stop hiv aids, sars and mers and never become a pandemic. i don't think it's hard or complicated, but we have the

tools, and we know what to do, it's merely the application of public will, go out and change the world. >> how are you? >> i love internal medicine. but this county break has taught me is that to help people to really make an impact, you need to be more than one. i really would love to learn and practice health system management. i believe that the health system can be better than what it is. you know i'm going away, i'm going to a different country, for one whole year, but i will call you every day. you know papa loves you, he yes? also everybody needs to learn

when it comes to health emergencies, until the entire world is safe, nowhere is safe. good morning. >> how are you? >> fine. >> good to see you. what keeps me awake at night now is that we will deliver on our promises to the people of west africa. that we will support this country to build the systems, to make sure that when there's another case of ebola, which will happen, that it doesn't give rise to a big epidemic. the time is gone that we lived on islands or that we were

protected. and there's no way to stop that. because fighting aids, or fighting the flu and sars in asia benefits people in europe and in north america. so we need to go beyond the boundaries of our own countries. >> the networks that connect us accelerate everything, the spread of ideas, conflict, people, and microbes, there is no running away. there is no wall high enough. >> what's absolutely missing, just not there, is trust. and so coming up with preparedness that looks like it could stand up to the microbes when an attack comes, it's really about each country carrying their own weight, yes, we always need to be watching, individual jens individual eminent. >> the hallmark of the 21st century is that our world is simultaneously more connected

and more fraught. epidemics are a test of who we are. we can use our connections for good, to make the world safer and healthier. or those connection also turn on us in an instant. >> we cannot just continue to be responding to every outbreak as it occurs. >> if we do not invest in better preparedness, we are setting ourselves up for help epidemics and pandemics, that will cost both lives and money. >> i can't some fatales say pandemics are inevitable so don't work it on it. pandemics aren't inevitable. outbreaks are inevitable, it's our option if we will be lazy, our it's option whether we will deny the risk, it's our option whether we will refuse to face the consequences. >> we have a chance to stop

something that otherwise could be horrific, but it's going to take all of us. ♪

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♪ this is cnn breaking news. >> welcome back, everyone. we're welcoming our viewers in the u.s. i'll cyril vannier in atlanta. >> i'm ivan watson. mike pence landed in seoul hours after another failed missile launch by north korea. aides to the vice president says he has been in contact with president trump. the launch was made from the port city of sinpo on the east coast. the type of missile has not been identified. but the u.s. military does not believe it was intercontinental. a u.s. official says