Sources close to the government’s pandemic preparedness unit have confirmed that a set of stark lessons from Ebola survivors is now shaping UK strategy. The mantra, relayed to me by a whistleblower who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, is deceptively simple: speed, money, compassion. But in the corridors of Whitehall, these three words conceal a bitter truth about how little we learned from the last crisis.
Speed, they say. The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa showed that a delayed response multiplies the death toll. The UK’s own pandemic legacy is littered with missed windows. Yet documents I have seen reveal that protocols for rapidly deploying mobile testing labs were shelved in 2017 because of budget cuts. The excuse: “cost efficiencies.” So when the next virus hits, expect a repeat of the frantic scramble.
Money, the second lesson. Survivors recall that funding streams went dry the moment headlines faded. A 2018 audit of the UK’s International Pandemic Preparedness Fund showed that less than 20% of allocated cash had actually been spent. Sources say the remainder was quietly redirected to pay for counterterrorism operations. The accounts do not lie: pandemic preparedness is a low priority until bodies pile up.
Compassion, the word that gives the suits a PR gloss. But what does it mean? Ebola survivors spoke of stigma, of being left without jobs or mental health support. In the UK, the same patterns are emerging. A leaked memo from the Department of Health outlines contingency plans for triaging care: essentially, who gets a ventilator when there aren’t enough. Compassion, in this context, sounds like a whisper in a room full of screams.
I have followed the paper trail. The Ebola survivor lessons were codified in a 2016 report by the World Health Organisation, yet the UK’s National Risk Register, updated quietly last October, still treats pandemics as a low-likelihood event. The funding gap is not a secret: it is a choice. Every time a budget is passed, someone decides that stockpiling PPE or training contact tracers can wait.
A former senior advisor to the Cabinet Office told me, “We treat pandemics like earthquakes: rare and unpredictable. But the science says otherwise. The next one is coming. It is a question of when, not if.” The same advisor showed me a spreadsheet of “priority risks” where pandemics sat below cyberattacks and extreme weather. The irony is that a pandemic amplifies every other risk: sick workers cannot patch software, exhausted medics cannot fight floods.
The public is kept in the dark. Official announcements are crafted to reassure, not inform. Recently, a glossy brochure touted the “world-leading” UK Biosecurity Centre. A whistleblower inside the centre described it as “a warehouse with a sign and two lab techs on loan from Porton Down.” The budget for the centre is less than what a single London NHS trust spends on parking fines.
Meanwhile, the survivors speak. A woman I interviewed, who fought Ebola in Sierra Leone and now lives in Manchester, told me, “You cannot buy time. You cannot borrow it. When the outbreak starts, you have to act. If you wait even one week, the maths changes.” Her voice cracked. She lost her brother to Ebola, and she fears the same bureaucratic lethargy will kill here.
So here is the question that no civil servant wants to answer: Why are we still working with shoestring budgets and outdated plans? The answer, I suspect, lies not in logistics but in political priorities. Pandemics do not have lobbyists. They do not donate to party funds. They do not vote. And so, year after year, the lessons of Ebola are filed away and forgotten.
I will keep following the money. Sources tell me that a new pandemic preparedness contract worth £150 million is being tendered. The winning bidder is likely a firm with close ties to the ruling party. I have requested the bidding documents under freedom of information. We shall see how transparent this really is.
For now, the mantra stands: speed, money, compassion. But without the political will to fund them, they are just words on a page. And words do not stop a virus.
