Review: ‘Frontline’ Looks at Missteps During the Ebola Outbreak

NEW YORK TIMES  By NEIL GENZLINGER                     May 3, 2015

(UPDATE: Scroll down for link to the PBS FRONTLINE  program on Ebola originally aired last night on American television.)

Heartbreaking stories from the Ebola outbreak are familiar by now, although that doesn’t make them any easier to hear, and a “Frontline” installment being broadcast on PBS on Tuesday night has its share. But it also has something less familiar: Officials acknowledging that they could have done a better job of responding to the crisis.

The program traces the outbreak to its origin, thought to be a tree full of bats in Guinea. And then it charts the early weeks, before the world took much notice, including the death of a revered traditional healer known as Mendinor along the border between Guinea and Sierra Leone. The customary funeral preparation, with its washing of the body, and the well-attended ceremony were the kinds of things that turned a small-scale problem into an out-of-control one.

Read complete review

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/arts/television/review-frontline-looks-at-missteps-during-the-ebola-outbreak.html?_r=1

See link to the program

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/outbreak/