When a nine-year-old boy who had just buried his family arrived at an Ebola treatment centre, a Canberra doctor was struck by his resemblance to her nephew.

Before the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa was recognised as a global humanitarian emergency, experts from the ANU Humanitarian Research Program were collaborating with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in at-risk countries.