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You may never have heard
of Kenema, Sierra Leone

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or Arua, Nigeria.

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But I know them as two of the most
extraordinary places on earth.

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In hospitals there, there's a community
of nurses, physicians and scientists

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that have been quietly battling

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one of the deadliest threats
to humanity for years:

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Lassa virus.

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Lassa virus is a lot like Ebola.

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It can cause a severe fever
and can often be fatal.

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But these individuals,
they risk their lives every day

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to protect the individuals
in their communities,

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and by doing so, protect us all.

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But one of the most extraordinary things
I learned about them

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on one of my first visits
out there many years ago

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was that they start each morning --

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these challenging, extraordinary days
on the front lines -- by singing.

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They gather together,
and they show their joy.

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They show their spirit.

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And over the years,

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from year after year as I've visited them
and they've visited me,

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I get to gather with them and I sing

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and we write and we love it,

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because it reminds us that we're not
just there to pursue science together;

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we're bonded through a shared humanity.

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And that of course, as you can imagine,
becomes extremely important,

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even essential, as things begin to change.

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And that changed a great deal
in March of 2014,

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when the Ebola outbreak
was declared in Guinea.

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This is the first outbreak in West Africa,

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near the border
of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

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And it was frightening,
frightening for us all.

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We had actually suspected for some time

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that Lassa and Ebola were more
widespread than thought,

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and we thought it could
one day come to Kenema.

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And so members of my team
immediately went out

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and joined Dr. Humarr Khan
and his team there,

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and we set up diagnostics to be able
to have sensitive molecular tests

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to pick up Ebola if it came
across the border

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and into Sierra Leone.

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We'd already set up this kind
of capacity for Lassa virus,

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we knew how to do it,

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the team is outstanding.

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We just had to give them
the tools and place to survey for Ebola.

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And unfortunately, that day came.

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On May 23, 2014, a woman checked
into the maternity ward at the hospital,

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and the team ran
those important molecular tests

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and they identified the first
confirmed case of Ebola in Sierra Leone.

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This was an exceptional
work that was done.

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They were able to diagnose
the case immediately,

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to safely treat the patient

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and to begin to do contact tracing
to follow what was going on.

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It could've stopped something.

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But by the time that day came,

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the outbreak had already
been breeding for months.

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With hundreds of cases, it had already
eclipsed all previous outbreaks.

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And it came into Sierra Leone
not as that singular case,

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but as a tidal wave.

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We had to work
with the international community,

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with the Ministry of Health, with Kenema,
to begin to deal with the cases,

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as the next week brought 31,

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then 92, then 147 cases --
all coming to Kenema,

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one of the only places in Sierra Leone
that could deal with this.

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And we worked around the clock
trying to do everything we could,

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trying to help the individuals,
trying to get attention,

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but we also did one other simple thing.

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From that specimen that we take
from a patient's blood to detect Ebola,

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we can discard it, obviously.

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The other thing we can do is, actually,
put in a chemical and deactivate it,

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so just place it into a box
and ship it across the ocean,

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and that's what we did.

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We sent it to Boston, where my team works.

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And we also worked around the clock
doing shift work, day after day,

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and we quickly generated 99 genomes
of the Ebola virus.

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This is the blueprint -- the genome
of a virus is the blueprint.

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We all have one.

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It says everything that makes up us,

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and it tells us so much information.

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The results of this kind of work
are simple and they're powerful.

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We could actually take
these 99 different viruses,

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look at them and compare them,

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and we could see, actually,
compared to three genomes

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that had been previously
published from Guinea,

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we could show that the outbreak
emerged in Guinea months before,

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once into the human population,

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and from there had been transmitting
from human to human.

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Now, that's incredibly important

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when you're trying to figure out
how to intervene,

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but the important thing
is contact tracing.

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We also could see that as the virus
was moving between humans,

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it was mutating.

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And each of those mutations
are so important,

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because the diagnostics, the vaccines,

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the therapies that we're using,

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are all based on that genome
sequence, fundamentally --

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that's what drives it.

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And so global health experts
would need to respond,

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would have to develop,

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to recalibrate everything
that they were doing.

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But the way that science works,
the position I was in at that point

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is, I had the data,

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and I could have worked
in a silo for many, many months,

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analyzed the data carefully, slowly,

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submitted the paper for publication,
gone through a few back-and-forths,

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and then finally when the paper came out,
might release that data.

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That's the way the status quo works.

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Well, that was not going to work
at this point, right?

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We had friends on the front lines

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and to us it was just obvious
that what we needed is help,

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lots of help.

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So the first thing we did is,

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as soon as the sequences
came off the machines,

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we published it to the web.

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We just released it to the whole world
and said, "Help us."

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And help came.

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Before we knew it,

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we were being contacted
from people all over,

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surprised to see the data
out there and released.

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Some of the greatest
viral trackers in the world

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were suddenly part of our community.

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We were working together
in this virtual way,

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sharing, regular calls, communications,

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trying to follow the virus
minute by minute,

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to see ways that we could stop it.

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And there are so many ways
that we can form communities like that.

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Everybody, particularly when the outbreak
started to expand globally,

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was reaching out to learn,
to participate, to engage.

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Everybody wants to play a part.

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The amount of human capacity
out there is just amazing,

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and the Internet connects us all.

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And could you imagine that instead
of being frightened of each other,

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that we all just said, "Let's do this.

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Let's work together,
and let's make this happen."

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But the problem is that the data
that all of us are using,

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Googling on the web, is just too limited
to do what we need to do.

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And so many opportunities
get missed when that happens.

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So in the early part
of the epidemic from Kenema,

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we'd had 106 clinical records
from patients,

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and we once again made that
publicly available to the world.

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And in our own lab, we could show
that you could take those 106 records,

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we could train computers to predict
the prognosis for Ebola patients

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to near 100 percent accuracy.

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And we made an app
that could release that,

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to make that available
to health-care workers in the field.

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But 106 is just not enough
to make it powerful,

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to validate it.

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So we were waiting for more data
to release that.

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and the data has still not come.

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We are still waiting, tweaking away,

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in silos rather than working together.

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And this just -- we can't accept that.

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Right? You, all of you,
cannot accept that.

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It's our lives on the line.

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And in fact, actually,

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many lives were lost,
many health-care workers,

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including beloved colleagues of mine,

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five colleagues:
Mbalu Fonnie, Alex Moigboi,

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Dr. Humarr Khan, Alice Kovoma
and Mohamed Fullah.

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These are just five
of many health-care workers

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at Kenema and beyond

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that died while the world waited
and while we all worked,

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quietly and separately.

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See, Ebola, like all threats to humanity,

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it's fueled by mistrust
and distraction and division.

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When we build barriers amongst ourselves
and we fight amongst ourselves,

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the virus thrives.

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But unlike all threats to humanity,

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Ebola is one where
we're actually all the same.

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We're all in this fight together.

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Ebola on one person's doorstep
could soon be on ours.

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And so in this place
with the same vulnerabilities,

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the same strengths,
the same fears, the same hopes,

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I hope that we work together with joy.

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A graduate student of mine
was reading a book about Sierra Leone,

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and she discovered that the word "Kenema,"

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the hospital that we work at and the city
where we work in Sierra Leone,

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is named after the Mende word
for "clear like a river, translucent

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and open to the public gaze."

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That was really profound for us,

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because without knowing it,
we'd always felt

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that in order to honor the individuals
in Kenema where we worked,

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we had to work openly, we had to share
and we had to work together.

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And we have to do that.

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We all have to demand that
of ourselves and others --

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to be open to each other
when an outbreak happens,

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to fight in this fight together.

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Because this is not the first
outbreak of Ebola,

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it will not be the last,

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and there are many other microbes
out there that are lying in wait,

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like Lassa virus and others.

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And the next time this happens,

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it could happen in a city of millions,
it could start there.

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It could be something
that's transmitted through the air.

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It could even be
disseminated intentionally.

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And I know that that is frightening,
I understand that,

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but I know also,
and this experience shows us,

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that we have the technology
and we have the capacity

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to win this thing,

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to win this and have
the upper hand over viruses.

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But we can only do it if we do it together

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and we do it with joy.

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So for Dr. Khan

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and for all of those who sacrificed
their lives on the front lines

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in this fight with us always,

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let us be in this fight with them always.

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And let us not let the world be defined

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by the destruction wrought by one virus,

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but illuminated by billions
of hearts and minds

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working in unity.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)