Leadership in Crisis: Management of Ebola

My Interview with President Sirleaf about how she Managed the Ebola Crisis

Ebola was a terrifying experience. It first hit in one of the remote places of the country far the North-East, on the borders with Guinea, which in a way a proved to be slightly better because had he started in the city, it would have been much more devastating where the concentration of the population is. But it started out there in the rural areas which was still very terrifying. There was a chaotic movement of people- everyone was moving to places that they didn't know, moving from what they didn't know, from something they couldn't see, they couldn't hear. All they knew is that their bodies were failing, and people were dying.

· When Madam Sirleaf got the first call, she didn’t even know what the diseased was. She was just told that people are dying from a strange disease where their eyes were bulging with blood streaming out of open pores. So, people were scared, literally scared running out of their households as a first reaction. Her first reaction was to call the military and put barriers because she wanted to stop movement of people in-order to stop the spread.

· There were ramifications for using force to control the epidemic. A child died in one of the quarantine units and many people were wounded. The military action was based on Sirleaf’s decision that they had to stop the movement of people and therefore would have to control the population. Well that didn't help because the government had no capacity to control them moving in different places and out of the entry reports. All they did was to come across somewhere else. And to move in larger numbers and then to challenge the control.

· Once the chaos had subsided, Madam Sirleaf went in and actually sat with the affected families- for example the family that had lost a child in the quarantine. She wanted to meet them in their own environment, in their homes, and reach out to them. When Madam Sirleaf went into the communities, she didn’t go with any protection or army, there was potential that the youth and some angry citizens would have rioted or harmed her. But she wanted to reach out to them, to bring in a sort of calmness and explain to them, why she made the decision to quarantine and how she quickly corrected it when it didn’t work and admitted to the failure.

· Difficulty managing people: Because of the low trust in government, people were resisting, even when he was sending people out there to administer services, they were rejecting it and felt that the government was promoting something that would, that would affect them. People attacked some of the forces, even those delivering services to them. Which shows the fear that it created, the fear made them lose any sense for reasonableness. People were thinking if this is happening to me and you can't give me that magic answer then you must be the perpetrator of this. It was a very difficult time to manage people and their reactions. Madam Sirleaf had to get personally involved in demonstrating the effort that is being made to counter it.

Hand-washing practice an encouraged practice after Ebola.This was outside the Principle office at the Polytechnic University

· Hard Decisions: Madame Sirleaf had to make some very harsh decision. One of the things that was a difficult decision even for her, was forcing people to cremate bodies. She herself was against the culture and the Muslim community were dead set against that, but they had to do it because many people were becoming infected through dead Ebola bodies and also, they were running out of places to bury people in Monrovia.

· But when Madam Sirleaf ultimately put the community in charge, and also took personal control of the outbreak by going into hospitals and clinics to give confidence to nurses and doctors who were on the front lines of service delivery, the epidemic took a turning point. Madam Sirleaf travelled in trucks into rural places where there were nurses doing their best to render service to people. Madam Sirleaf had to go and sit with them, carry supplies. She carried supplies and medication all around the country to different places.

African Solidarity: Liberia also got a lot of support from other African nations including business people such as Dangote and the ADB bank that provided funding to the African Union. The AU created a consolidation fund from different companies. The funds provided means whereby young Africans from different countries, came to help join other young people in the fight against Ebola. There was also bilateral support from other African nations that provided medication, food, and ambulances. Madam Sirleaf was able to garner support because of her experience working with people in a long time and having established good relations in all engagements or environment in which Madam Sirleaf operated. However, Madam Sirleaf was also very forthright about who she was and her intention. She always communicated well to ensure she is managing expectations.· Resilience through the crisis: During this time of the Ebola crisis, Madam Sirleaf relied a lot on her faith. She thinks because her mother was a strong Christian, she instilled in her a faith that, “God didn't bring me this far to leave me.” It was a song that she played for her constantly.

Mary Broh, one of the former Ministers who is still a Minister showing hand washing with chlorinated water, an initiative that was introduced during the Ebola Epidemic for Infection Prevention and Control