As the Ebola outbreak in DRC winds down, Trish Newport, previous emergency coordinator for Ebola in DRC takes a moment to reflect on MSF’s strategy for the outbreak – what worked and what didn’t work from her perspective.

At the onset of the outbreak, no time was taken to engage with the affected communities, listen to their needs, build trust, or to consider the fact that the outbreak was happening in an area that had been plagued in recent years by conflict and had experienced massacres of the civilian population.

This video looks back at the change in strategy adopted by MSF after the attacks on the ETCs in Butembo and Katwa, almost one year ago. After that, the organization began involving communities more in the heart of its response in order to create the relationship of trust necessary to combat the spread of Ebola, and other deadly diseases in that area.

Other organisations that are part of the ebola response in DRC also began to engage more with the community, but they continued to do things that alienated them from people locally, such as using armed escorts, forcibly isolating patients, performing forced burials and stationing armed personnel in health facilities.

The concern according to Trish is that the measures taken by these organisations could set a dangerous precedent in how future outbreaks are managed, especially now that the number of Ebola cases is finally dwindling and the outbreak will likely end soon.