Guinea–Liberia border

Liberia’s lost strip

A Franco-Liberian convention of 1892 drew the line as straight lines along parallels and meridians. In 1907 the two sides agreed it was physically impossible to apply and that natural features should be used; the new line transferred a large strip of Liberian territory to French Guinea, eastward to the Nimba Range. A mixed commission delimited it in 1911, along the Liberian bank of rivers such as the Makona, joined by straight segments.^[1]

Where Ebola began

WHO traced the West African Ebola epidemic to an 18-month-old boy in Meliandou, a village of 31 households in Guinea’s Guéckédou district, in the Forest Region. He fell ill on 26 December 2013 and died two days later, probably infected through contact with wild animals; much of the surrounding forest had been lost to mining and logging. The disease was not identified as Ebola until 21 March 2014.^[2]

WHO said movement across West Africa’s exceptionally porous borders, with families spread over several countries, made the outbreak much harder to control: people crossed borders readily, but responders tracing their contacts could not.^[3]

“Populations readily cross porous borders but outbreak responders do not.”^[3]