WEBVTT

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I'm professor Hans Rosling.

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I'm standing on the roof of my hotel
in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.

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Now it's a peaceful city, but just
a little more than 10 years ago

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ended a cruel civil war here.

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After that, the economy
of the country was broken,

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health services and schools were down;

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but now, in the last ten years,
things had been improving:

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there were a fast economic growth,

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people were coming out of extreme poverty,

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and health was improving.

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Ebola put a stop to that.

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The relation between extreme poverty
and Ebola go both ways.

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Extreme poverty was a major reason

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to why the outbreak of Ebola
became so huge here:

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people live so crammed in the slum here,

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they don't have water and sanitation.

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When someone started
to vomit and got sick,

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the whole family got infected!

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And now, when Ebola is here,

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it stops businesses,
economy comes to a standstill,

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people lose their job
and poverty gets worse!

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So, in order for Liberia
to fight the extreme poverty,

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they must start by fighting Ebola.

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And when Ebola is gone
- because it has to go down to zero -

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the best way to prevent
Ebola from coming back

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is to fight and put an end
to extreme poverty.

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Now, for the rest of us,
living in other parts of the world,

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at better economic levels,
we also have a reason to fight Ebola,

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because it is a global security reason
of immense proportions!

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And I have grandchildren:
I don't want them to live in a world

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where Ebola virus
travels around the world.

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So how could I stop it?

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There's no better way of stopping Ebola
than come here in West Africa,

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and fight it side by side
by the people in these countries.

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And my experience here
in Liberia is very positive:

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there's a fantastic response
against Ebola among the professionals,

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the government, and especially
the people themselves.