Liberian Leader Concedes Errors in Response to Ebola

NEW YORK TIMES  by Rick Gladstone                                                                   March 12, 2015 

The president of Liberia acknowledged on Wednesday that she had erred in ordering a tough security crackdown at the height of the Ebola crisis last year, describing the deadly virus as an “unknown enemy” that had frightened her.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf during a video address last Deceber to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

The president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel peace laureate, said that in hindsight, her deployments of troops and police officers to seal off a vast neighborhood in her nation’s capital — which set off skirmishes with residents, fueled distrust of the government and led to the death of a teenager — had been counterproductive.

“It did not take long to know that did not work,” she said in an interview with the The New York Times Editorial Board. “It created more tension in the society....”

“Now I know that people’s ownership, community participation, works better in a case like this. I think that experience will stay with us.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/world/africa/liberian-leader-concedes-errors-in-response-to-ebola.html?_r=0