we had a trivail lent vaccine effort going, and that was intended to treat not just ebola zaire, but bola sudan and marburg virus as well. and at the start of this outbreak when it became clear hey, we're dealing we with ebola zaire, there were efforts to identify is there a vaccine candidate that could treat the disease circulating in west africa, and you've all heard about, i believe, the vfv delta g vaccine candidate. and that -- the testing has gone on at r.a.r.e. our group was involved,nih was involved, i think, colonel thomas you'll touch upon that in your talk. so what i've tried to highlight is that when we talk about medical countermeasures, it's much more than just the science that has to take place. it's getting the commercial partners, it's a business model that exists. i don't know if any of you are familiar with the fda priority voucher programs. so a number of years ago it was recognized that we were not delivering medical countermeasures more some of those threats that occur in the less developed parts of the world, you know? where diseases occur that there's just not

then the most important for ebola zaire diagnostic for this outbreak. it provided a real-time diagnostic capability on the ground. i do want to take just a moment to highlight that because when i was in kikwit in 1995 one of the critical things that was missing was the ability to diagnose real-time on the ground because every patient after the first patient was diagnosed as ebola come any patient after that it looked like ebola went into the global award. doing this outbreak with real-time diagnostics on the ground were able to set of screening capabilities to where patients could be tested and then sent to a different treatment facility if they were not positive for ebola. this is critical. this assay was also approved by the fda emergency use authorization to give to diagnose samples from u.s. citizens on the ground. .. the intent was to be able to monitor the virus, to be able to track any genetic changes because if it was genetically mutate. we want to track that throughout the outbreak. a number of standard publications were used as reference mater

that was a vaccine intended to treat not just ebola zaire but ebola sudan and marburg virus as well. at the start of this outbreak when it became clear we are dealing with ebola zaire, working with the dod and hhs there were efforts to identify is there a vaccine candidate that could treat the disease circulating in west africa, and you've all heard about up with what's called delta vaccine candidate and that, the testing is gone. nih was involved. you'll hear more i think colonel thomas will touch upon that in your talk. so what i tried to highlight is that when we talk about medical countermeasures, each march more than just the sites that has to take place. it's getting the commercial partners. it's a business model that exist. i don't know if any of you are fully with the fda priority voucher program. a number of years ago it was recognized that we were not delivering medical countermeasures to some of those threats that occur in the less developed parts of the world. where diseases occur that there's just a commercial market. into the u.s. congress establish fda priority voucher