Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who made history as Africa's first elected female president, led Liberia for 12 years including during the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak that killed nearly 5,000 people in her country. AFP asked the Nobel Peace Laureate for her reflections on the current coronavirus crisis. Dear fellow citizens of the world, On 19 October 2014, at the height of the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, when 2,000 of my citizens had already perished and infections were growing exponentially, I wrote a letter to the world pleading for the mobilisation of personnel and resources. I demanded a show of global unity to avert what we feared would be a worldwide pandemic. Today, I take this opportunity to raise my voice in a message of solidarity. Almost six years ago, I explained how Liberia's post-conflict economy, and its fragile healthcare system, made it vulnerable to the rapid spread of disease, and I contended that how the world responded to the localised crisis in West Africa, would define our collective healthcare security. I argued that an uncontrolled contagion, no matter where in the world, and no matter how localised, is a threat to all of humanity. The world responded positively. And did so boldly. A mass mobilization of resources led by the UN, the World Health Organization, and the US followed. We defeated it together. As a result, today there are effective experimental vaccines and antivirals thanks to the collaboration of the best scientific minds around the world. In the face of the coronavirus outbreak, I am making a similar plea to my fellow world citizens. I do this with an acute awareness that while African nations have so far been spared the worst, it is only a matter of time until it batters the continent which is the least prepared to fight it. We must act to slow down, break the chain of transmission, and flatten the curve. It is clear that lapses were made in the initial response to the virus, from Asia to Europe, to the Americas. Cues were missed. Time was wasted. Information was hidden, minimised, and manipulated. Trust was broken.