Written by Heidi Vogt | From The Wall Street Journal

Two months after Liberia’s largest slum fought a government-imposed Ebola quarantine, residents are in a desperate push to conquer the deadly virus—with or without the government’s help.

It is a marked change from August, when many in West Point argued Ebola was a hoax and some residents even dumped the highly contagious corpses of Ebola victims into a nearby river to avoid handing them over to the government’s body-collection teams.

Ebola is still spreading through West Point, but so are changes to habits and traditional practices that offer a glimmer of hope in an impoverished country’s fight against the deadly virus. The shift is also key to the international effort to contain the disease.

West Point isn’t the only place where attitudes are shifting, but it is particularly remarkable because the slum—where more than 50,000 people live in closely packed tin-roofed shacks—is one of the poorest districts of the capital city and because the government almost gave it up for lost.

When President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf imposed the quarantine in mid-August, Ebola was threatening to consume the slum. Angry about being sealed off and abandoned by the government, residents of West Point rioted in anger and overran a school that was being used as an Ebola holding center.

Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf lifted the quarantine after 10 days, but the measure became a catalyst for the community. When the lockdown ended and international aid organizations poured into West Point with bleach, rubber boots and information, community leaders decided they needed to take action fast.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal