ebola response

Mosoka Fallah

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C
Focus Area(s)
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3
Country of Reform
Interviewers
Leon Schreiber
Name
Mosoka Fallah
Interviewee's Position
Director,
Interviewee's Organization
National Public Health Institute of Liberia
Language
English
Nationality of Interviewee
Liberian
Town/City
Monrovia
Country
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
No
Abstract

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.

Profile

At the time of this interview, Dr. Mosoka P. Fallah was the founding director of the newly established National Public Health Institute of Liberia. During Liberia’s 2014-15 Ebola outbreak, he served in many different capacities. He began as the head of the Ebola response team for the NGO Action Contre La Faim (Action Against Hunger, or ACF). Later, he became head of contact tracing, case investigation, and active surveillance for Montserrado County. He received his Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from the University of Kentucky and his master’s degree in public health with an emphasis in infectious disease and epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Full Audio File Size
66 MB
Full Audio Title
Mosoka Fallah Full Interview

Hans Rosling

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C
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4
Country of Reform
Interviewers
Leon Schreiber
Name
Hans Rosling
Interviewee's Position
Co-Founder,
Interviewee's Organization
Gapminder Foundation
Language
English
Nationality of Interviewee
Swedish
Country
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
No
Abstract

In this 2016 interview Hans Rosling reflects on his role in the response to the 2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa. Rosling traveled to Monrovia, Liberia in October 2014 to assist the Incident Management System (IMS) with modeling the spread of the disease. He describes Liberia’s case monitoring systems and the challenges of coordinating data collection and epidemiological surveillance. Rosling discusses how domestic and internationals responders coalesced into an organized force for disease control and treatment. When the large numbers of cases in West Africa crashed a CDC-provided database called Epi-Info, Rosling switched to a system of Excel spreadsheets. He also introduced daily situation reports to update the response team members about the status of cases across the country and served as a powerful communicator of the story behind the data.

Profile

Hans Rosling was a Swedish physician, academic, statistician, and public speaker. He was Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet, where he led the Division of International Health (IHCAR) from 2001 to 2007. In 2005, he co-founded the Gapminder Foundation, which makes development data freely available and easy to analyze and visualize with the goal of promoting sustainable global development. Rosling held presentations around the world, including several TED Talks in which he promoted the use of data to explore development issues. Throughout his career Rosling focused on community-based epidemiology. After studying medicine and public health at Uppsala University (Sweden) and St. John's Medical College (India), he served as a public health officer in post-Independence Mozambique. He then helped Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and  other countries identify and track a rare paralytic disease, which he discovered arose from poorly processed cassava. In the early 1990s, he worked in Cuba to help respond to an epidemic of neuropathy that occurred there. He co-founded Doctors Without Borders Sweden and long-time adviser to WHO and UNICEF.  Rosling supported the response to the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak and traveled to Liberia to assist in October of that year.

 

Qazi Ullah

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A
Focus Area(s)
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6
Interviewers
David Paterson
Name
Qazi Ullah
Interviewee's Position
Deputy Chief Integrated Support Services
Interviewee's Organization
UNMIL
Language
English
Town/City
Monrovia
Country
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
No
Abstract

In this interview, Colonel Qazi Ullah, Deputy Chief for Integrated Support Services at UNMIL and a Bangladeshi military logistician. Colonel Ullah begins by describing the initial challenges of coordinating the logistics of a 35-agency response effort for Ebola. He then details a variety of specific logistics problems he dealt with and the innovative solutions he and his team were able to design, relating to issues such as Priority Procurement Lists for donors, warehouse management, shipping and helicopters, and cold storage challenges for medical supplies. Finally, Col. Ullah concludes by reflecting on the overall logistical successes in the management of the Ebola crisis, offering lessons learned and best practices going forward. 

Profile

Colonel Qazi Ullah is a Bangladeshi military logistics officer and the Deputy Chief for Integrated Support Services at the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). Prior to joining UNMIL, he held a variety of assignments relating to logistics, natural disaster response, and national emergency response for the Bangladeshi army. He also was stationed at the UN Mission in Sierra Leone, and did a first tour at UNMIL before being assigned as a military advisor to the UN Mission for West Africa in Senegal, after which he returned to UNMIL to assume his current post in January of 2014. At UNMIL, his main responsibilities encompassed all logistical coordination for the multi-agency response to Ebola, when he simultaneously worked for UNMIL and was seconded to the Liberian Ministry of Health, coordinating resources and supply chain management for the Ebola response for over 35 different multinational partner agencies. 

Full Audio Title
Audio available upon request

Chea Sanford Wesseh

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C
Focus Area(s)
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1
Country of Reform
Interviewers
Leon Schreiber
Name
Chea Sanford Wesseh
Interviewee's Position
Assistant Minister for Vital Statistics
Interviewee's Organization
Ministry of Health
Language
English
Town/City
Monrovia
Country
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
No
Abstract

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. 

Profile

At the time of this interview, Chea Sanford Wesseh served as the head of contact tracing during the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, for all regions outside of Montserrado County as part of Liberia’s national incident management system. Prior to his role in the Ebola response, he held the position of assistant minister of vital statistics in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare since his appointment in 2006. At the time of the interview, he continued to fulfill this role in the ministry.

Full Audio File Size
56 MB
Full Audio Title
Chea Sanford Wesseh Interview

Adolphus Scott

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D
Focus Area(s)
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1
Country of Reform
Interviewers
Leon Schreiber
Name
Adolphus Scott
Interviewee's Position
Communication and Development Unit
Interviewee's Organization
UNICEF
Language
English
Town/City
Monrovia
Country
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
No
Abstract

In this interview, acting head of the Communication for Development Unit of UNICEF prior to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Adolphus Scott describes how conflicting messages circulating in the community hindered the Ministry of Health’s attempts to control the virus. He explains the process of coming up with one set of messages among key actors that was then distributed in the form of posters, short dramas, and radio messages. Scott also tells about the troubling and limiting narrative against the government airing on about 22 radio stations toward the beginning of the outbreak saying that the government to secure more funding fabricated Ebola. Eventually, he says, they came on board and worked with UNICEF and the Ministry of Health to circulate their Ebola is Real program, a campaign complete with a popular song around July 2014. Scott also provides a brief overview of the new Incident Management System’s Social Mobilization Working Group, which worked to engage communities in the fight against Ebola. He also stresses the importance of conversing with and learning from community leaders early on and justifies the regret he feels about how late in the timeline the organizations met with religious and traditional leaders.

Profile

During the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Adolphus Scott worked on public health messaging in coordination with the Health Promotion Division in the Ministry of Health. Having spent twelve years working with UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) in Liberia, Scott served as the acting head of Communication for Development Unit of UNICEF prior to the Ebola outbreak. His work dealt with issues of child vaccination, nutrition, education and protection.

Full Audio File Size
62 MB
Full Audio Title
Adolphus Scott Interview