UKTV's Hollywood Treasure Detectives To Support Ghana’s Ebola Response

10.10.2014 LISTEN

Accra-Ghana, Friday 10th October, 2014—Though Ghana is yet to record any cases of Ebola, efforts to manage and respond to prevent the spread of Ebola has received a major boost with the coming of an initiative by CNBC's/UKTV's Hollywood Treasure Detectives.

The TV Crew led by Andy Smith and Curtis Dowling based in the UK would be travelling in a few weeks time to West Africa, Ghana to raise awareness and further set up a support fund.

The group will be holding talks with the Government of Ghana and the major health stakeholders on how to liaise with them in terms of managing Ghana and West Africa's response to the Ebola virus.

“With the TV and film community coming together to support the struggle to suppress Ebola in West Africa the hosts of CNBC's/UKTV's Treasure Detectives are travelling to West Africa to raise awareness, get on all the radio and TV channels in the region and a mission to discuss with the President or Vice President of Ghana the distribution of an aid fund they have started to organise. Andy Smith and Curtis Dowling are prepared to put themselves into the lion's mouth to get the world talking even more,” Mr. Curtis Dowling told ModernGhana in an interview.

He adds that the aim is to raise awareness of the plight of West Africa, medically and economically and to help by showing support in the long term against Ebola.

“Ghana is the perfect venue for a staging post to deliver help and aid to other parts of West Africa who are suffering more. The excellent infrastructure, the forward thinking and the excellent facilities. We believe our voice can be loud due to our position in the media. We can bring the situation to a wider audience and through our own experiences in west Africa report back in a 'none news way' how things are developing and what is being done. Our own project hopefully bringing in more help and more support in many ways to the regions most in need”

He said the project is starting in Ghana with the hope of expansion to help the suffering in Liberia and Sierra Leone as well.

Touching on the global strategy by the UN to respond to the spread of Ebola, Mr. Curtis Dowling said all large business had constraints and the UN is equally doing their best but more efforts from other sources should be encouraged.

“The UN is doing its best but we hope they will welcome our support and input and through our work we hope we can help them too. The USA recorded its first death case as a result of the Liberian Ebola Patient Thomas Duncan's visit, this tells you that Yes! The rest of the world needs to understand that we are more global than we used to be with freedom of travel and cheaper airfares, this terrible situation could spread further and quicker than anyone expects if everyone does not do their fair share to help, hence our involvement”

On the future of the project, this is what Mr. Dowling had to say:

“We are working one day at a time but our commitment is long term and we hope that fellow TV and film professionals will get more and more involved as our presence and project grows with the help of the people of west Africa and hopefully the forward thinking and help of the Government of Ghana who we hope to meet on our trip.”

Ebola Facts

As the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa continue to threaten humanity as one of the world's most incurable disease in recent times, the campaigns for awareness creation appear to be living up to expectation to a very large extent.

The Ebola virus causes an acute, serious illness which is often fatal if untreated. Ebola virus disease (EVD) first appeared in 1976 in 2 simultaneous outbreaks, one in Nzara, Sudan, and the other in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo.

The latter occurred in a village near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name. The current outbreak have been recorded in West Africa, (first cases notified in March 2014), is the largest and most complex Ebola outbreak since the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976 according to the World Health Organisation.

The most severely affected countries, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia have very weak health systems, lacking human and infrastructural resources, having only recently emerged from long periods of conflict and instability.

There have been more cases and deaths in this outbreak than all others combined. It has also spread between countries starting in Guinea then spreading across land borders to Sierra Leone and Liberia, by air (1 traveller only) to Nigeria, and by land (1 traveller) to Senegal and the recent case in Dallas, America.

The WHO reveals that the cumulative number of cases and deaths, officially reported to from 23 March to 22 September, is 5,843 cases and 2,803 deaths. To date, 337 health care workers have been infected, and more than 181 of them have died.

The United Nations Mission on Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) are presently in Accra, Ghana following the establishment of a Mission to set up of a logistics centre in Accra as a major intervention in terms training care givers, management and prevention of the disease.

It is in this direction that more interventions from different sources are being put in place to help with the emergency response.

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