Friday, December 12, 2014

Went to White House today for meeting 1:45 PM to 3:00 PM in the Roosevelt Room. Crystal clear, crisp and cold December day. Meeting was to review the situation with the Ebola-ready hospitals and Assessment Hospitals in the USA and to discuss the shifting of resources from Liberia (low infection rate now) to Sierra Leone (rising infection rate). Present at the meeting were: POTUS, VP Biden, Lisa Monaco, Susan Rice, Denis McDonough, Ron Klain, Sylvia Burwell, Chairman, Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey, Tom Frieden by teleconference from Atlanta, Samantha Powers by teleconference from NYC – UN, Assistant Secretary Heather Higginbottom from State, Nancy Lindborg from USAID, Raj Shah – USAID. Ron Klain asked me to review for the POTUS the status of the vaccine plans as well as to explain the situation with the VSV adverse event of arthritis (see above). POTUS asked a few other questions of me. He referred a few times to his trip to NIH. Good meeting Did WTOP today December 12 – 14, 2014 – Cliff Lane has now gone to Liberia for the fourth time in order to set the stage for the upcoming randomized, placebo controlled, double-blind, clinical trial for the GSK/NIAID and the VSV vaccines. We are still getting nefarious comments and undermining of our efforts by the people from the UK, particularly Jeremy Farrar and Adrian Hill among others. They continue to inappropriately talk about the inadequacy of our vaccine efforts even though they are working with the same vaccine. It is unbelievable to me how nefarious they can be when the main goal should be to develop a vaccine to save the lives of so many unfortunate people in the West African countries. Nonetheless we will forge on and hopefully prove the safety and efficacy of this vaccine.