As well as the hunger and murder, the Ebola Crisis developing in the south may spread throughout the country.
Indeed, several of my constituents have been deployed abroad to support the international response to the Ebola Crisis, which is widely reported in the media.
On the Ebola Crisis, does the Minister agree that, alongside our assistance on medical treatment services, it is very important that we also help on the prevention side by stopping transmission, getting good public information and sensitising communities?
My Lords, in the light of disclosure that the Swedish furniture manufacturer, IKEA, has provided more funds than Spain, Luxembourg and Norway combined in responding to the Ebola Crisis, will the Minister tell us what response the Prime Minister has had from the letter that he sent to 27 European leaders last week asking them to increase their contribution to match that of the generous response of the United Kingdom?
Last week, I thought the Leader of the House assured me that there would be an opportunity to discuss the Ebola Crisis in Africa.
I asked last week about the Ebola Crisis and feel passionately that we seem to be ignoring it in the House.
I turn briefly to the Ebola Crisis in west Africa.
Turning to the Ebola Crisis in west Africa, the whole world has been horrified by the devastating scenes.
What progress her Department has made on its work with the Ministry of Defence to tackle the Ebola Crisis in west Africa.
The UK is leading the international response to the Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone, committing £230 million so far.
Given that every day delayed means more lives lost to the Ebola Crisis, what pressure is she applying to the international community and all agencies to ensure that they deliver on their promises?
As he says, a key element of the Ebola Crisis has been the lack of a co-ordinated response at the beginning, and we need to learn from that.
I met UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim to discuss the post-2015 development goals and the global response to the Ebola Crisis.
We are looking particularly at the vulnerability of children in Sierra Leone as many of them are orphaned as a result of the Ebola Crisis.
The most fragile states are those that have proved to be most at risk, which shows the Ebola Crisis is about more than Ebola.
My Lords, at the outset I must pay tribute to the considerable contribution that the United Kingdom and its NGOs, health workers and service personnel are making in efforts to respond to the Ebola Crisis.
Quite apart from the present effort to deal with the Ebola Crisis, I will emphasise just two points on future policy.
The Ebola Crisis is already a medical and humanitarian disaster.
Although the international response to the Ebola Crisis was initially tardy, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, said, I would also like to praise Her Majesty's Government and our ever excellent Armed Forces in their recent major initiatives.
On the Ebola Crisis, I welcome the UK's role as the second-largest donor in helping tackle this potential threat to people, not just in west Africa but across the world.
On the Ebola Crisis, I welcome the UK's role as the second largest donor to help tackle this potential threat not just to people in west Africa, but across the world.
Immediate action on the Ebola Crisis is important.
The fact is that, at the moment, as should be remembered in the context of the Ebola Crisis, 35 million people have died from AIDS.
He is obviously not aware that very large numbers of people in this county feel passionately about inequality in the world, about the Ebola Crisis and about many other crises, and that they believe that donating money, through the taxpayer and individually, to help to alleviate that terrible suffering involves a moral duty as well as a public good.
In Sierra Leone and Liberia, we saw health systems that were beginning to show some signs of effectiveness, but as we now know, they were totally overwhelmed by the Ebola Crisis, which they are incapable of handling.
We urge the Government, perhaps once they have gone a little further in dealing with the Ebola Crisis, to tell us how they propose to set out a reconstruction programme for Sierra Leone in the coming years, because that is what is required.
If for six months, a year, or a couple of years - or however long is needed to help Sierra Leone to respond to, deal with and recover from the Ebola Crisis - we send a few hundred British health personnel to the country, but we typically take several hundred professionally qualified health staff from Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in Africa, year in, year out, are we helping or hindering its response to the health crisis?
He is absolutely right to point to the positive interventions that the Nigerian Government were able to carry out because of their pre-planning and their thought leadership in advance, which enabled them to deal with the Ebola Crisis.
Linking that to the Ebola Crisis, I want to re-emphasise the question that my hon. Friend the Member for York Central asked.
It would also be interesting to get information about the number of volunteers and health workers, or people with health expertise, who are not linked to the NHS, but are none the less based in the UK and who have gone to Sierra Leone and other territories specifically to help on the Ebola Crisis, perhaps through NGOs or other schemes.
He seemed to skirt quickly over the issue of jobs and employment, and he did not say whether he accepts that the commitment made to create 30,000 jobs by 2015 has not yet been met and will be reviewed after the Ebola Crisis - or has that commitment been met?
The Minister seemed to suggest that, after the Ebola Crisis, the budget reduction in the bilateral agreement between Sierra Leone and the UK Government will be restored in full.
They fear that issues such as malaria have taken a back seat, despite malaria costing more lives than the Ebola Crisis.
Finally, disaster management, including the Ebola Crisis, was mentioned in the previous debate; what specific action is being taken to make sure that rather than looking at vulnerable people as a whole, we consider protecting disabled people in particular during disasters?
My Lords, I pay tribute to the job that these people do for the National Health Service, but is not the lesson of the Ebola Crisis that many of the health services in Africa are seriously underresourced?
Particularly with the Ebola Crisis, it is important that we are sensitive to the serious issues that pertain in Sierra Leone in particular.
The United Kingdom is leading the international response to the Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone, from where I have just returned.
As I have said, I announced new protection and support for children affected by the Ebola Crisis, working with UNICEF.
Only yesterday, I announced support for orphans and children affected by the Ebola Crisis, but it is part of a much bigger policy agenda and investment that we undertake to make sure we support children.
Peter Piot is a remarkable man who came to Downing street to advise the Prime Minister and me early in the development of the Ebola Crisis.
These are just three questions that the Ebola Crisis raises: whether we are doing enough to develop and produce vaccines; whether our policies in the West are taking away a disproportionate number of doctors and nurses from African countries which badly need them; and, above all, how we can further strengthen the health systems of countries such as Sierra Leone so that further human tragedies can be prevented.
The Ebola Crisis has confirmed a new reality: that we live in a shrinking world.
A few weeks ago, I was asked to speak at a dinner in south-east London to raise money for the Ebola Crisis.
The Ebola Crisis is ongoing, and it is too early for us to say what might not have been done as well as it could have been.
My Lords, the United Kingdom is leading the international response to the Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone.
The UK has committed £325 million to tackling the Ebola Crisis.
There are cases where the Armed Forces commit themselves, as in the Ebola Crisis, to functions that are not necessarily directly related to defence, but where they are operating in difficult circumstances where they have particular attributes to defend themselves.
The Ebola Crisis is a good example of the failings of the current global model, whereby a vaccine is developed only after a crisis has developed because there was no market incentive to develop one before.
There is no greater example than the Ebola Crisis.
My Lords, we should acknowledge that all military and civilian healthcare workers and volunteers who have travelled to Sierra Leone to work in healthcare during the Ebola Crisis know that, despite all the precautions, they are placing themselves at risk.
The Ebola Crisis has disrupted markets and access to food and other essentials for many families.
The Ebola Crisis has shown why the work that we do in development is so important.
It is a happy coincidence that this debate follows the statement on the Ebola Crisis and what will be a magnificent page in the history of the armed forces and government.
I welcome the Minister to her new post, but may I gently remind her that the British Army's capacity to intervene, even in helping with the Ebola Crisis, will become more limited as time goes on, as America retreats as a pushy world power and we are more on our own in Europe and the world?
Just as the Ebola Crisis went much wider than health, so did the UK's contribution, with crucial programmes delivered by many NGOs, supported by the British public's generous response to the Disasters Emergency Committee's first ever health appeal.
One lesson we must learn from the Ebola Crisis is that whatever we did in the past to support poor countries to build their health systems and their societies has not worked, otherwise this would not have happened.
At the latest G7 summit, responding to lessons from the Ebola Crisis, G7 leaders pledged to help strengthen the world's ability to prevent, detect and respond to disease outbreaks.
According to Save the Children, nearly half the population of Sierra Leone is under the age of 18, and the impact of the Ebola Crisis on their lives now and on their future opportunities has been far-reaching: no school, loss of family members and friends to the virus, and changing roles and responsibilities in the home and community.
During the Ebola Crisis, DfID funded research with the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and others to develop new vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics on a scale not seen in previous health crises.
The Ebola Crisis that threatened to engulf west Africa was just a five-hour plane ride away from the UK.
In addition, the Ebola Crisis has shone a light on the UN's failures to deliver on critical health priorities.
My Lords, does the Minister agree that women have been disproportionately affected by the Ebola Crisis?
The Ebola Crisis last year, particularly in Sierra Leone, was absolutely devastating, but it would have been far worse without the 800 UK military personnel who were sent to west Africa.
7% of GDP commitment for the international aid budget, and she highlighted the important role that our service personnel play in humanitarian work, particularly the 800 service personnel who supported those affected by the Ebola Crisis in Africa.
The Ebola Crisis was indeed a wake-up call.
The Ebola Crisis in west Africa has painfully illustrated the importance of strong public health systems for fighting disease.
The innovative response to the Ebola Crisis was one example of that.
They have provided specialist help to deal with the Ebola Crisis in west Africa, and maritime reserves have taken part in counter-terrorist and counter-piracy operations alongside their regular counterparts.
The Ebola Crisis highlighted the importance of sustainable public health systems.
My noble friend again addresses a real, serious issue - one we recognised when we had to deal with the Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone.
I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for his assistance in getting the LIBOR funds for the Mary Seacole memorial, plus the memorial gardens for nurses and other medical forces in combat zones and in danger zones, such as west Africa in the Ebola Crisis.
The Ebola Crisis in west Africa has painfully illustrated the importance of strong public health systems in fighting diseases.
They have proved themselves to be an effective and important network of mobilisation, and their capacity will be relevant to other challenges, including those diseases that lost priority during the Ebola Crisis.
There are a number of orphans as a result of the Ebola Crisis, too.
Kids in Kailahun, a small Pendle-based charity, does fantastic work in the Kailahun district of Sierra Leone and did so throughout the Ebola Crisis.
We are privileged to have the ability to stand in this Chamber and give our views on this matter, but it is the workers on the frontline in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in DFID and - as we saw during the Ebola Crisis - in the military who deliver what we advocate in this House in support for Africa and the developing world.
In the light of the Ebola Crisis, how are the Government scrutinising and supporting the WHO leadership, which was severely criticised during that crisis, while the UK response was greatly praised?
To defeat such horrible illnesses, we need to tackle them at their source, as we saw with the Ebola Crisis and outbreak.
This Government's investment in our foreign policy capability delivers results on many fronts: whether the key role we played in the Iran nuclear negotiations, or our leadership in tackling the Ebola Crisis.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her reply and for her consideration of the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Africa on lessons to be learned from the Ebola Crisis, which will be launched publicly later today.
My Lords, will the Government acknowledge that, prior to the Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone, they were planning to cut support for health systems in that country?
My Lords, I saw for myself at the height of the Ebola Crisis last year and again on the return to visit the Parliament in Sierra Leone last month the value that communities there put on the work of the Minister's department, the Foreign Office, NHS volunteers and international development agencies.
My Lords, in his pre-summit report, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, the United Nations Secretary-General urges world leaders not to underestimate or, worse, override the work of local organisations in dealing with humanitarian crises, because they are the best placed to shape programmes in culturally sensitive ways, as we saw in the Ebola Crisis.
As we have seen in recent years with the Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone and the ongoing crisis with the Syrian refugees, the UK is at the forefront of international development work.
It was exactly these structures that were able to detect that the Ebola Crisis was developing, so we protect ourselves as well as protecting others.
Oxfam has told us that our development aid has helped it to deal with the Ebola Crisis, and with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nepal.
He was right, too, to emphasise the role played by Britain in Europe in negotiating agreement with Iran and securing support for action to tackle the Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone.