In this interview, Dr. Mosoka P. Fallah, who played a key role in the Montserrado Incident Management System, discusses the evolution of the Ebola response in Liberia. He explains the failure of the initial top-down approach in city districts like West Point, where distrust of the government led to violence and a largely ineffective attempt to contain the spread of Ebola. Fallah goes on to describe the process of developing a bottom-up approach, known as the community-based initiative, which engaged local leaders to find cases and build knowledge about the disease neighbor to neighbor. He also provides insight into how a lack of resources and coordination among various supporting NGOs and government teams led to a prolonged epidemic in Liberia.

In this interview, Chea Sanford Wesseh describes early challenges to the Ebola response in Liberia. As the head of contact tracing in the national incident management system (IMS) during the 2014-2015 outbreak, he provides insight into the initial lack of resources and training that affected the country’s response. Throughout, Wesseh emphasizes that every aspect of a response, from contact tracing to case management to burial, must be properly functioning for the response to be effective. He explains the role of contact tracers and how that role shifted as the response came to include community members as active case finders, also giving the contextual background that led to this shift in the response. Reflecting on the operation as a whole, Wesseh outlines aspects of the response that shifted to create an effective Ebola response in Liberia.