LIBERIA NOW FREE OF EBOLA

(CNN)After losing more than 4,000 people to Ebola,Liberia has now been declared free of the disease by the World Health Organization (WHO).

I wish I were there to hug the wonderful people I met when I visited at the height of the epidemic in September, when any contact, even shaking hands, was forbidden.

It was a horrible time. Ebola patients stood in line to get into hospitals that didn't have a bed to spare. Thousands of children in West Africa were orphaned. Burial teamsroamed the streets carrying victims to crematoriums.

"We went through just a horrific epidemic," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who visited the country in August. "It's a searing memory that many of us will carry with us for the rest of our lives."

Something else is seared in my mind, too: the realization that smart people failed to stop this epidemic before it got so terribly out of hand. The outbreak started in March, and when I arrived six months later, the response was still clumsy.