W. Africa Better Prepared to Contain Future Ebola Outbreaks

A health worker takes the temperature of people to see if they might be infected by the Ebola virus inside the Ignace Deen government hospital in Conakry, Guinea, March 18, 2016.

The World Health Organization’s Regional Director for Africa says West Africa is better prepared to tackle future outbreaks of Ebola. In an exclusive interview with VOA, Matshidiso Moeti says Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are now able to respond more quickly to emergencies because of upgrades to their surveillance, laboratory and health care systems.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan delivers a speech during the World Health Assembly, with some 3,000 delegates from its 194 member states on May 23, 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Moeti became head of WHO’s regional office for Africa in February 2015, at the height of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. As the World Health Organization’s chief troubleshooter in the region, she told VOA she knew she had to do whatever was necessary to stop the spread of this fatal disease.

Ebola had killed more than 11,000 people in the three most heavily affected West African countries by the time WHO declared the transmission of the Ebola virus virtually over at the end of last year.

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