Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Liberia has faced many challenges in its historical journey. Not so long ago, we were the epicenter of a regional war by which we experienced a total economic collapse and massive destruction of infrastructure and institutions.

Today, we face perhaps the greatest challenge for we cannot allow the projection of a worst case scenario that over a hundred thousand of our innocent citizens will die from an enemy disease they did not start and do not understand; that the resulting effect will reverse our gains in malaria and child and maternal mortality.

The Liberian people have deep rooted culture and traditions – the extended family system compels us to take care of our children and our mothers and fathers. It tells us to be at the side of the dying and accompany them to their final resting place. We succumb to fear and anger when we are told that we must back away from a bleeding and vomiting mother or child that our dead loved ones must be taken away by strangers with their bodies never to be seen again or to be memorialized.

Today, this unknown enemy has taken the life of over 1700 of our people including 85 of those trained to save lives. It has gone beyond that for it is threatening livelihoods –precipitous decline in economic activity, loss of income and jobs, deteriorated health services, price increases, and limitations in free movements.

Partners and friends, based on understandable fears, have ostracized us; shipping and airline services have sanctioned us, and the world has taken some time to fully appreciate and adequately respond to the enormity of our tragedy.

We are fighting back. With the support of many of you, we are intensifying our response - building and staffing more treatment centers across the country, moving more aggressively to prevent the transmission and change behavior through community outreach and ownership.

Liberians have proudly developed a resilient spirit of overcoming great tragedies. With your help, we are poised to do so once again.

I thank the many of you around the table who have joined us in this fight – partners who through robust response have given us renewed trust in the value of partnerships, partners who have given us renewed hope in a bright future for our children.

Thank you for listening.