Disinfection specialist comes face to face with deadly foe

"Contrast" was the word Zhang Liubo, a disinfection and sanitation expert who has just finished his two-month stint in Sierra Leone, a West African nation still trying to free itself from the deadly grip of the Ebola virus, used to describe his initial feeling of shock.

"When China was in the throes of the SARS epidemic in 2003, the streets of Beijing became a no-go zone. People accepted and embraced their self-imposed confinement at home, out of fear," said the 52-year-old who was a member of the Chinese medical team sent to Africa by the Disease Control and Prevention Center to fight Ebola late last year.

"But there, at Freetown, the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone, as we were driven to the hotel at the end of a day's work, the locals were singing and dancing by the roadside, under a canopy of stars.