Science, Medicine & Engineering
Landmark
Mosoka Fallah
1969 – 2022
Went into West Point during the Ebola epidemic and found a way to stop it
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Liberia Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
An epidemiologist who grew up in the slum he later walked back into during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, winning the trust that armed soldiers could not, and doing the contact tracing that turned the epidemic around.
Mosoka Papa Fallah was born in a poor quarter of Monrovia, spent part of his childhood in the West Point township, and trained as an immunologist, taking a doctorate in the United States before returning home.
When Ebola reached Liberia in 2014 the state's response — a cordon thrown around West Point, enforced by soldiers — produced riots and drove the sick into hiding. Fallah argued that an epidemic is stopped by trust and not by troops, went into the communities himself, recruited local people to do the contact tracing, and built the case-finding system that health authorities and the international response adopted. Liberia was declared free of transmission in 2015. TIME named him among its Ebola Fighters as Person of the Year for 2014. He later led the National Public Health Institute of Liberia and died in 2022 at fifty-two.
When Ebola reached Liberia in 2014 the state's response — a cordon thrown around West Point, enforced by soldiers — produced riots and drove the sick into hiding. Fallah argued that an epidemic is stopped by trust and not by troops, went into the communities himself, recruited local people to do the contact tracing, and built the case-finding system that health authorities and the international response adopted. Liberia was declared free of transmission in 2015. TIME named him among its Ebola Fighters as Person of the Year for 2014. He later led the National Public Health Institute of Liberia and died in 2022 at fifty-two.
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