We are still learning the full extent of the ebola catastrophe

The international community was content to ignore the ebola epidemic until it was so widespread it no longer could. By then, it was too late to avert a major catastrophe, writes Samuel Kargbo

I WAS a young medical officer working at the Emergency Unit of the Ola During Children’s Hospital in Sierra Leone when I advised the mother of a child with severe malaria to tell a blatant lie.

Her daughter Mariama needed a life-saving blood transfusion. But her mother had no money to pay for the screening tests and to compensate the blood donor.