Liberia Struggles to Contain Ebola Virus Outbreak…President Johnson Sirleaf: ‘Unlikely We Are Yet At The Peak of Ebola’s Spread’
By Drew Hinshaw
WSJ.com
Aug. 26, 2014
Liberia’s Ebola crisis will likely worsen in the weeks to come, the country’s president told The Wall Street Journal, as she acknowledges the outbreak has overpowered her nation’s public health system.
“It is unlikely we are yet at the peak of Ebola’s spread,” President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said in an email response to questions from The Wall Street Journal.
At 75 and with just two years remaining in her presidency, the epidemic presents Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf with a career-defining crisis. It has killed 1,426 of the 2,615 people that have contracted the virus in West Africa, with nearly half the deaths falling in Liberia.
Her government has been criticized for the relatively slow response to the outbreak, and authorities face an uphill task to contain the virus. In many ways, Ebola has exposed a gulf between how Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf–Africa’s first female president–is viewed abroad, versus the more complex portrait she strikes at home.
In the West, Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf is a beloved figure with a lost list of honorary degrees and awards, including a Nobel Peace Prize.
But at home, she faces deep cynicism towards her government in some quarters that has led many Liberians to conclude that Ebola is a government scam to raise foreign aid money.
“It’s because of lack of trust in governance that we have” [this crisis]” said Tiawan Gongloe, the former solicitor general who has become one of Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf fiercer critics after he resigned from her administration. “The government said ‘Ebola is here’ and people didn’t believe it.”
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