How Ebola Put Liberia on a Proactive Stance with the Current Pandemic

With an extensive foreign direct investment background, Rebecca Gaskin Gain focuses on global energy markets and has experience in driving transactions spanning Africa and the Middle East. With a strong interest in the role that technology can have in improving lives, Rebecca Gaskin Gain maintains a watch on current events in Africa. A recent MIT Technology Review article brought focus to ways in which the previous Ebola pandemic prepared Liberia for strategies on containing the current Covid-19 pandemic.
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According to the current Deputy Minister of Health and Chief Medical Officer of Liberia, proactive efforts started in January, when the country was one of the first worldwide to begin Covid-19 screening at airports, with travelers arriving from highly infected countries (with 200 or more confirmed cases) undergoing quarantine at the Precautionary Observation Center.

Lessons gained during the major Ebola effort in 2014-2015 were also implemented in early campaigns that worked to promote social distancing, hand washing, and other preventative measures. These efforts worked well because ordinary citizens still remembered the experience of fighting off a devastating epidemic.

As the Deputy Minister describes it, there are still challenges in the current effort, including rumors that the coronavirus was made up, as a way of enabling international organizations and the government to pocket money. However, memories of the Ebola experience have made this less of an issue than it otherwise would have been.