GWEN IFILL:

With the death toll in West Africa now over 8,000, government and humanitarian organizations are reassessing the most effective way to tackle the deadly Ebola virus.

From launching new drug trials to building new clinics, the United Nations, the United States and nongovernmental agencies around the world are ramping up, scaling back and searching for new approaches to curb the epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Delaware Democrat Chris Coons, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa Affairs, has just returned from Monrovia. And Anthony Banbury has just completed a 90-day term as head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response.

Welcome to you both, gentlemen.

Senator Coons, you just came back here. You're the first and only member of Congress to actually have gone to the Ebola zone, as it were. What did you see?

SEN. CHRIS COONS, (D) Delaware: Well, I was really impressed by the impact that America's troops have had in the country of Liberia. Let's just go back for a second to September, when President Obama took the decisive, the brave action of deploying the entire 101st Airborne Division, 2,400 U.S. troops, to Monrovia, Liberia.

At that point, the Ebola epidemic in Liberia was raging out of control, and there were predictions by the CDC that, by now, in January, there would be at least half-a-million people infected by Ebola if it continued at the rate it was on at that point.

What I saw when I visited was that our troops all over the country have made a dramatic difference. They have built Ebola treatment units. They have deployed military-grade high-quality labs and testing facilities. They have provided the logistics and support to reinforce and reassure volunteer doctors and nurses and missionaries from around the world, and the rate of new infections in Liberia has dropped dramatically.

There's also been real changes in social practices. Every place I went, folks were being checked for their temperature, washing their hands in a bleach solution. Nobody was shaking hands, and, most importantly, both safe and dignified burial practices were being put in place around the country.

So I'm optimistic about the impact that we have been able to make in Liberia, and eager to talk tonight about how we might apply those lessons learned to Sierra Leone and Guinea, where it still is largely out of control.