Together with Médecins Sans Frontières‎ and the World Health Organisation, we hosting a two day conference on the global response to Ebola. By pulling together and sharing the collective knowledge, we're working hard to ensure that, as a team, we have a head start on any future epidemics This presentation was by John McGhie

1. John McGhie - DFID

2. Lesson learnt from PPE procurement
Position during 2014 –
• Development of group consensus on appropriate levels of PPE to
respond to outbreak. WHO – World Heath Organisation, MSF –
Médecins Sans Frontières, MOD, NHS, PHE – Public Health England,
NGO’s.
• Refinement of level of protection and associated standard operating
practises.
• Approach to market midway through development to ascertain current
stock levels and manufacturing lead time.
• Secure forward commitment of stocks and manufacturing slots with
each supplier.
• Package and ship to Sierra Leone – Airbridge direct and via UK.

3. Lesson learnt from PPE procurement
Post Response –
• Development of global standard of PPE for each primary VHF agreed by
all main responders / agencies.
• Development of global standard of testing protocols for each type of
PPE equipment. Current testing protocols varies from lab to lab.
• Review previous outbreaks and agree global benchmarked level of
stock to be secured in centralised warehousing to respond to future
occurrences.
Achieved –
• Two CIPS procurement awards.
• Two Global supply chain awards.
• One Air freight award.
• One British Expertise award.
• Articles published in European / Africa Business Review, Supply
Management, UK National press.

4. Lesson learnt from PPE procurement
Benefits –
• All actors would have confidence in agreed levels of protection and
safety protocols in the use of the equipment appropriate to the type of
response.
• A routine laboratory testing regime to verify stockpile of PPE is fit for
purpose. Current life cycle is around 5 yrs. shelf life.
• Secured forward commitment from manufactures not during a
response period would allow for a gradual build up of stores,
maintaining set Quality Control processes.
• Cost effective purchase, shipping and storage would offset the high
price of air freight of goods during emergency
• Reduced possibility of bottlenecks in supplier manufacturing pipelines.

5. Lesson learnt from PPE procurement
UK’s achievements –
• The UK led the international response to the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone and has
committed £427 million to ending the epidemic, largest bilateral donor.
• The UK's objective is to support the Government of Sierra Leone to maintain a
'resilient zero'.
• Over 1,500 British military personnel deployed to construct six UK funded
treatment centres from scratch and trained over 4,000 Sierra Leonean and
international healthcare workers.
• Over 150 NHS volunteers who worked on the frontline to support over 1,500
treatment and isolation beds — more than half of all the beds available for
Ebola patients in the country.
• Over 100 Public Health England staff ran three new laboratories, greatly
speeding up the diagnosis of people with Ebola-like symptoms.
• The UK delivered 2,800 tonnes of aid for the response. More than one million
PPE suits and 200 vehicles, including ambulances.