The top health story of 2014, the West Africa Ebola outbreak, dominated news coverage and sent shockwaves through global travel and trade. Liberian journalist Wade C. L. Williams was on the front lines in Monrovia as an investigative journalist and head of the news desk at FrontPage Africa, one of West Africa’s largest digital news organizations.
Her first-person account of what happened before, during and after Ebola captured the headlines opens the 2016 Global Diseases: Voices from the Vanguard lecture series on Jan. 12. This is the first of four events sponsored by UGA’s Grady College Health and Medical Journalism graduate program and the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases.
Williams’ talk, “Mobilizing West African Communities to Defeat Ebola,” takes place at 5:30 p.m. in the Chapel. The lecture is open free to the public.
During the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Williams was one of the most influential Liberian journalists who rigorously covered the epidemic. Wade’s first investigative work on the disease in 2014 and a subsequent op-ed in The New York Times led the government to change its approach to response to the disease.
“When Ebola hit, Wade Williams was already internationally known for her coverage of top health issues in Liberia and other West African countries,” said Patricia Thomas, co-organizer of the series and Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism at Grady College. “Since the crisis began, she’s also reported for the Associated Press, Bloomberg News and The Daily Beast and has won accolades for her work. We’re so pleased she’s coming to UGA.”