A report on lessons from the Ebola crisis suggests the UK is vulnerable to future epidemics because it lacks the capacity to rapidly manufacture vaccines.
The UK's response to the Ebola crisis was slow and inefficient, and may have failed to prevent thousands of cases of the disease in West Africa, says a parliamentary report.
The report, from the House of Commons science and technology committee, found that while volunteers, medical staff, and civil servants worked "tirelessly" to fight the disease, "delays were evident at every stage of the response" and lives were needlessly lost, especially in Sierra Leone.
Pauline Cafferkey, a Briton who caught Ebola in Sierra Leone, flies to London for treatment. AFP / Getty Images
The report says: "The failure to conduct therapeutic trials earlier … not only cost lives in this outbreak but will impact our ability to respond to similar events in future."
It also warns that the committee is "not convinced … that the government has looked ahead and considered how a more timely, coordinated and robust response could be achieved when the next epidemic emerges".
More worryingly for the future, it says, the UK lacks the means to rapidly manufacture vaccines.
And, it says, building the facilities to do so will take years, leaving the UK in a "vulnerable" position. Dr Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust told the report that "if something dreadful happens on a regional or global scale, getting vaccines would be incredibly difficult. … [The UK] would be on its own. That is a very worrying situation to be in."
The British hospital ship RFA Argus leaves Falmouth for Sierra Leone. Matt Cardy / Getty Images
For instance, a new testing kit that would have sped up the procedure for detecting Ebola from days to minutes was rapidly developed, but then – despite government promises to make 10,000 of them – never produced in large numbers.
The government also ignored World Health Organisation recommendations to introduce screening for Ebola at British airports that the report says lacked "scientific evidence and rationale". Prof George Griffin, an infectious diseases specialist, told the report that screening was an "incredibly blunt and insensitive tool".