Satellites The Latest Weapon Against Ebola

Technology built in the UK is being used to map the spread of the disease and help aid workers plan the location of key resources.

With the deadly Ebola virus spreading fast on the ground in West Africa, the fight to tackle the outbreak has taken to the skies.

For the first time UK satellites are now being used to help respond to the disease after they were activated by the International Charter for Space and Major Disaster.
Business Secretary Vince Cable visited Surrey Satellites Technology, near Guildford, which has been building satellites for more than 30 years and is heavily involved with this new mission.
He said: "This is a massively impressive, sophisticated facility that puts Britain very much at the head of work on animal diseases and animal viruses in particular.
"This is a centre that goes back a hundred years, it has proven itself in the past."

It is the first time UK satellites have been used to respond to a disease

Surrey Satellites Technology was involved in fighting the outbreak of bluetongue among livestock, and Mr Cable said it helped to save the UK £500m.
A total of five satellites built at Surrey are currently in orbit and being used to map areas of West Africa.
Currently humanitarian organisations have to rely on inaccurate information or maps that are out of date.
Satellite images will be able to focus on the epidemic in Sierra Leone, for example, pinpointing areas which have been infected, places where people can get help or even highlighting the best routes to evacuate people.
Matt Goodman, head of communications at the UK Space Agency, said: "We are not quite sure exactly how all this is going to work, but we're testing out as much as we can and providing data to teams who maybe are working off local maps that are decades old.
"The unique vantage point of space gives us the opportunity to provide them maps of urban sprawl, or infrastructure, and the valuable things that they will need to know to plan evacuation routes and to site recovery hospitals."
This is the first time satellites have been used to help respond to cases of disease.
Steven Young, of Surrey Satellite Technology, said: "Typically they are used for things like flooding, earthquakes forest fires and so on.
"This is the first time the charter has been activated to use satellite imagery to look at the spread and how do we cope with disease."
If this mission proves successful, experts say satellites could be used more in the future to tackle public health emergencies.
The next generation of satellites is already being built and will give higher resolution and more precise images of currently unmapped areas.