Welcome to Public Health On Call, a new podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Our focus is the novel coronavirus.

I'm Josh Sharfstein, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, and also a former secretary of Maryland's health department.

Our goal with this podcast is to bring evidence and experts to help you understand today's

news about the novel coronavirus and what it means for tomorrow.

If you have questions, you can email them to public health question at jhh.edu.

That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

Today, I speak with Tolbert Nianswa, a senior research associate at the Johns Hopkins

Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Mr. Nianswa was serving as an assistant minister of health in Liberia when President

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf asked him to lead the nation's response to the Ebola epidemic.

Under his leadership, Liberia overcame many obstacles to control the spread of the disease.

We speak about the lessons of Liberia's control

of the Ebola epidemic for our current pandemic

with coronavirus.

Let's listen.

Thank you, Mr. Nianswa for joining me.

Now, you led the response to the Ebola epidemic in Liberia.

Can you explain the situation before you took over that response?

Thank you, Josh.

And thank you for having me.

It's a critical time in the war.

...