Gabriella Jóźwiak - Freelance Journalist

"Senior UK  Department for International Development  officials have admitted the body made mistakes in its response to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, while also suggesting how the department could respond better to similar crises in future. DfID’s chief scientific adviser and director of research and evidence professor Chris Whitty told a panel of influential members of Parliament that the department had “multiple lessons” to learn as a result of the viral epidemic in Sierra Leone, which has now topped 9,000 cases — more than any other affected country in West Africa. Whitty's comments came during an evidence session held by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee — known as PAC — which is investigating whether DfID’s response to the ongoing epidemic is providing value-for-money to the U.K. taxpayer. PAC Chair Margaret Hodge asked Whitty why, during DfID’s years of involvement in Sierra Leone since the end of the country’s civil war, it ...

"In September, teacher Foray Turay should have welcomed 300 children to his primary school in the Sierra Leonean village of Samaya. But not a single child in the country has attended lessons since 31 July, when the government declared a state of national emergency to contain the deadly Ebola virus. Across the three worst-affected West African countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, 5 million children aged between 3 and 17 are currently out of education. With more than 16,000 reported Ebola cases and in excess of 6,900 deaths, it is safer for children to stay at home than sit on crowded school benches where physical contact – the way the virus spreads – is unavoidable. But with the outbreak still far from being under control, educationalists are concerned that pupils will miss an entire academic year, or never return to their studies..." Read the full article on TES online . 

With the Ebola crisis still far from unresolved, Devex spoke to the scientist who helped to discover the Ebola virus almost four decades ago to learn more about what the global development community needs to do right now to tackle the disease. Peter Piot, director and professor of global health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and founding director of UNAIDS , traveled in 1976 to Zaire — now Democratic Republic of the Congo — to help quell an outbreak that was rapidly spreading from village to village. After identifying the virus from a Belgian nurse, Piot’s team put infected people into quarantine and was able to contain the epidemic within three months and after the disease had killed over 300 people. Here are Piot’s four pieces of advice for the ongoing international effort to contain Ebola in West Africa and beyond... To read the full article, go to Devex.com .

"WHEN Oliver Johnson, a British doctor, left home on Friday to drive to work in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, the normal buzz of street life was hushed. A three-day nationwide lockdown — the government’s extraordinary experiment to combat the lethal ebola virus — had begun. “The streets were deserted except for small groups of people in bright white T-shirts saying ‘ebola is real’ on them,” said Johnson. Soldiers patrolled streets to ensure residents stayed indoors. Anyone moving around was escorted home under threat of arrest. Police set up checkpoints and allowed only official cars to pass..." Read the full article on the Sunday Times website .

I wrote and recorded a From Our Own Correspondent piece for the BBC World Service while out in Sierra Leone. It explains the reasons for the headcount of street children I was involved in, and the daily plight of thousands of street children. You can listen to the piece on the BBC World Service website .

During my time in Sierra Leone, I uncovered a project to count the country's street child population. I shadowed the work of the local 'counters', and reported on the situation for the Independent in this feature.