ECOWAS Chairman, John Mahama has admitted that Africa’s initial response to the deadly Ebola disease was “knee jerk”.

According to the Ghanaian President, the complex nature of the virus overwhelmed the continent at the initial stages.

“It was a new disease in West Africa and people did not understand the way it was spread and so the initial responses were knee jerk” he told CNN’s Richard Quest in an interview on Wednesday, September 24.

Mr Mahama, however, expressed confidence in the ability of Africa to fight the disease in view of the support it is receiving from the global community.

“The world is beginning to do something and so the worst case scenario is not likely to play out. The initial response was very slow but I think that it’s picked up.

The treatment centers are beginning to come up, the isolation centers are coming up, the governments have done a lot of work in putting in place screening procedures to ensure that they don’t allow people to infect others,” he stated.

Ebola has so far killed 2,811 people and affected over 5,800 people and the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Ebola infections could reach 20,000 by November if efforts to tackle the outbreak were not stepped up.