In Sierra Leone, the Ebola outbreak in 2014-16 caught everyone, including the World Health Organisation, completely unprepared. Award-winning reporter Umaru Fofana talks to Tulip Mazumdar about his own experience of the outbreak; plus we hear from both local and western doctors and aid workers about the fight to bring the disease under control. Central to this was persuading grieving families – with the help of social scientists – to change their burial practices.

(Photo: Health workers carry a stretcher at the Kenama Ebola treatment centre run by the Red Cross, 2014. Credit: Francisco Leong/AFP/Getty Images)