CONAKRY, Guinea — The phone rang. It was the president. “The ambulances? Yes, excellency, we need at least 15 to cover our needs,” the nation’s harried Ebola czar answered.
But the president of Guinea was just getting started, calling back a few minutes later. “Yes, excellency, to transport the samples, we need good vehicles,” the Ebola czar answered patiently.
Then the president, Alpha Condé, wanted to know about new Ebola treatment centers and the new Ebola database on cellphones. And how about those experimental tests, or the car for the chief of staff?
“I’ll send you the information right away,” answered the Ebola czar, Dr. Sakoba Keita, cradling his head in his hands. After 15 minutes, the president hung up. A rueful smile played on the doctor’s lips. It was 5:30 in the afternoon, but the day was far from over. The president called his Ebola point man back 10 minutes later with more questions.

The change of heart has been sharp. At the start of the outbreak, Mr. Condé was incredulous, denying its seriousness and wasting crucial weeks that could have helped contain it.
Predicting “rapid and final success” in late March, he said the situation was “well under control” only a month later, even as health officials under him massaged the numbers to avoid scaring off much-needed investors in his impoverished nation, senior international health officials said.
“They are very much annoyed by Ebola, because of the investors,” a senior Doctor without official said here in early July. “The government’s first concern was not to scare outsiders. They wanted to minimize the cases.”
Upset by the group’s dire warnings, Mr. Condé publicly criticized Doctors Without Borders, despite its lonely efforts to blunt the disease on the front line. But as Mr. Condé played down the outbreak, Ebola was steadily entrenching itself in the Guinean forest villages where it surfaced nearly a thousand years.

Now, after more than a thousand deaths in Guinea, Mr. Condé has reversed course. Disturbed by the threat to his country’s people and economy, he is grappling with Ebola nearly every waking moment. Having initially overlooked the crisis, he is now micromanaging it, some international officials say.
“While shaving I think of Ebola, while eating I think of Ebola, while sleeping I think of Ebola,” Mr. Condé, 76, said at the drab, concrete, Chinese-built presidential palace named for Ahmed Sékou Touré, the nation’s first president and strongman, who forced Mr. Condé into exile in 1970 and condemned him to death in absentia.
“When you are at war, how can you think of anything else?” Mr. Condé said, leaning forward, describing his battle with Ebola in the rapid staccato delivery for which he is known.
Much of Guinea’s political establishment has been compromised by association with the country’s past autocrats, reinforcing the go-it-alone tendencies honed by Mr. Condé’s decades in exile. The soldiers now guarding the presidential palace are aggressively loyal: Mr. Condé was the target of an assassination attempt at his home by restive army officers three years ago.
 Ebola Now Preoccupies Once-Skeptical Leader in Guinea By ADAM NOSSITERNOV. 30, 2014

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Ebola Now Preoccupies Once-Skeptical Leader in Guinea By ADAM NOSSITERNOV. 30, 2014

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