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Report
A review of the social and behavioural science research landscape for mpox in African settings
This report maps and synthesises social and behavioural science studies on mpox in sub-Saharan Africa from 2017 until December 2025.
Case study
SSHAP learning note: Building a localised approach
This learning note shares insights, experiences and lessons from SSHAP's approach to the localisation of its operational responses in sub-Saharan Africa.
Briefing
Addressing the kush epidemic in Sierra Leone
This Key Considerations brief contextualises and provides insight into an epidemic which is symptomatic of deeper, long-standing issues which require sustained and comprehensive solutions beyond immediate emergency measures.
Briefing
SSHAP West Africa Hub: Health emergency cycles and social context in West Africa fr
This landscape paper summarises the contextual factors that shape health emergencies and responses to health emergencies in the West Africa region, drawing on examples from Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
Briefing
Effective vaccine rollout and uptake in Sierra Leone
This Key Considerations brief proposes key considerations for ongoing vaccination efforts in Sierra Leone, including for the hepatitis vaccine and new malaria vaccine (RTS,S/AS01 (RTS,S)), offering insights on planning equitable vaccine campaigns for new infections.
Policy document
Covid-19 Response Intra-Action Review (IAR) Report, Sierra Leone
This report details the findings of an Intra-Action Review (IAR) that was undertaken on the 22nd & 23rd September 2020, to review the COVID-19 response in Sierra Leone, focusing in particular on Surveillance, Laboratories, Case Management, Risk Communications, Food and…
Policy document
Pandemic Influenza Strategic Plan (PISP) Jan 2020 to Dec 2024
The Government of Sierra Leone’s plan for tackling a future influenz\a pandemic, written just before the Covid-19 outbreak.
Policy document
National Ebola Recovery Strategy for Sierra Leone 2015–2017
The Sierra Leone government’s immediate post-Ebola strategy for rebuilding the health system during and after the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic
Vaccine anxieties, vaccine preparedness: Perspectives from Africa in a Covid-19 era
Global debates about vaccines as a key element of pandemic response and future preparedness in the era of Covid-19 currently focus on questions of supply, with attention to global injustice in vaccine distribution and African countries as rightful beneficiaries of…
Research paper
“You have to find a caring man, like your father!” Gendering sickle cell and refashioning women’s moral boundaries in Sierra Leone
This qualitative study undertaken in 2018, explores if and how sickle cell disorders become gendered in Sierra Leone through the analytical framework of a feminist ethics of care.
Research paper
West African Migration in the Age of Climate Change : Translocal Perspectives on Mobility from Mali and Senegal
This thesis contributes to the debate on climate change, environment, and migration by scrutinizing conceptual and methodological deficiencies and adopting a migration research perspective. The author uses a multi-sited ethnography in Mali and Senegal to show how human activites shape…
Research paper
“We are the heroes because we are ready to die for this country”: Participants’ decision-making and grounded ethics in an Ebola vaccine clinical trial
This paper reports findings from social science research carried out in Kambia, Northern Sierra Leone during first year of an Ebola vaccine trial (August 2015–July 2016). The study used a range of qualitative methods to explore participant motivations for volunteering…
Research paper
Violence and the body: somatic expressions of trauma and vulnerability during war
Drawing on ethnographic research conducted along the Sierra Leone-Guinea border during wartime, this article explores the contested nature of the body and bodily illness during times of spectacular political violence.
Research paper
Unintended consequences of the ‘bushmeat ban’ in West Africa during the 2013-2016 Ebola virus disease epidemic.
Following the 2013-2016 outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa, governments across the region imposed a ban on the hunting and consumption of meat from wild animals. This injunction was accompanied by public health messages emphasising the infectious…
Research paper
Structural drivers of vulnerability to zoonotic disease in Africa
This paper analyses three case studies—trypanosomiasis in Zimbabwe, Ebola and Lassa fever in Sierra Leone and Rift Valley fever in Kenya — to argue that addressing the underlying structural drivers of disease vulnerability is essential for a ‘One Health’ approach…
Research paper
Responsibility, repair and care in Sierra Leone’s health system.
Central to the workings of a hospital are the technical and bureaucratic systems that ensure the effective coordination of information and biological materials of patients across time and space. In this paper, which is based on ethnographic research in a…
Policy response to COVID-19 in Senegal: power, politics, and the choice of policy instruments
The objective of the paper is to understand how Senegal formulated its policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The response was rapid, comprising conventional policy instruments used previously for containing Ebola.
Past horrors, present struggles: the role of stigma in the association between war experiences and psychosocial adjustment among former child soldiers in Sierra Leone.
We examined the role of stigma (manifest in discrimination as well as lower levels of community and family acceptance) in the relationship between war-related experiences and psychosocial adjustment (depression, anxiety, hostility and adaptive behaviors).
Negotiating Intersecting Precarities: COVID-19, Pandemic Preparedness and Response in Africa
This article shares findings on COVID-19 in Africa across 2020 to examine concepts and practices of epidemic preparedness and response. Amidst uncertainties about the trajectory of COVID-19, the stages of emergency response emerge in practice as interconnected.
Men’s experiences of pregnancy and childbirth in Sierra Leone: Reexamining definitions of “male partner involvement”.
In recent decades, global health researchers and policy makers have advocated for men’s increased involvement in pregnancy and childbirth with the goal of improving maternal health outcomes. However, such approaches often fail to account for the culturally valid and gendered…
Local disease-ecosystem-livelihood dynamics: reflections from comparative case studies in Africa
This article explores the implications for human health of local interactions between disease, ecosystems and livelihoods. Five interdisciplinary case studies addressed zoonotic diseases in African settings: Rift Valley fever (RVF) in Kenya, human African trypanosomiasis in Zambia and Zimbabwe, Lassa…
Exceptional suffering? Enumeration and vernacular accounting in the HIV-positive experience.
Drawing on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Freetown, Sierra Leone, I highlight the recursive relationship between Sierra Leone as an exemplary setting and HIV as an exceptional disease. Through this relationship, I examine how HIV-positive individuals rely on both…
Engaging ‘communities’: anthropological insights from the West African Ebola epidemic
This article reflects on the nature of community engagement during the Ebola epidemic and demonstrates a disjuncture between local realities and what is being imagined in post-Ebola reports about the lessons that need to be learned for the future.
Ebola-Myths, Realities, and Structural Violence
This briefing examines responses to the Ebola outbreak and offers a different set of explanations, rooted in the history of the region and the political economy of global health and development.
Accepted monitoring or endured quarantine? Ebola contacts’ perceptions in Senegal
During the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola epidemic, transmission chains were controlled through contact tracing, i.e., identification and follow-up of people exposed to Ebola cases. WHO recommendations for daily check-ups of physical symptoms with social distancing for 21 days were unevenly…
Briefing
Ebola in West Africa: Impact on Health
The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is by far the largest ever recorded, and already numbers more cases than all past Ebola epidemics combined. This Briefing outlines the overall impact on health.
Briefing
Ebola in West Africa: Protection and Security
The lack of a prompt, robust, and efficient response to Ebola from the international community contributes to lack of trust in governments and exacerbates social tensions, increasing the possibility of profound unrest in these fragile countries.
Briefing
Ebola in West Africa: Potential Impact on Food Security
A multidimensional and multi-sector approach is required to contain the outbreak of Ebola while safeguarding against a long-term food security crisis.
Case study
Ebola in West Africa: Impact on Health Systems
Fear of contracting EVD and mistrust of the health system has made people reluctant to seek treatment from health facilities, further impacting the health sector and increasing the risk of mortality and morbidity from otherwise treatable diseases.
Briefing
WASH in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone: The Impact of Ebola
This document summarises the baseline data on WASH available for Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone
Briefing
Ebola outbreak in West Africa 22 months: on Key issues for recovery and preparedness
While surveillance and treatment efforts to stop the transmission and re-emergence of Ebola continue, the response is moving away from its emergency phase towards longer-term recovery and building a more resilient health system.
Case study
Ebola outbreak in West Africa: Challenges to the reintegration of affected groups into communities
This report outlines the key challenges that Ebola survivors and their households, grieving families, orphans, quarantined people and frontline workers face as they reintegrate into their communities
Briefing
Beyond a Public Health Emergency: Potential Secondary Humanitarian Impacts of a Large-Scale Ebola Outbreak
This report documents the secondary humanitarian problems and impacts of largescale Ebola outbreak on the different humanitarian sectors
Briefing
Emergency Ebola Anthropology Network Advisory Brief: Culture and Clinical Trials fr
This advisory brief aims to provide anthropologically informed guidance to governmental and humanitarian actors involved in the Ebola response at local, national and international levels, about clinical trials for Ebola treatments, therapies and vaccines.
Briefing
Burial/Other Cultural Practices and Risk of EVD Transmission in the Mano River Region
While this briefing note identifies arenas of particular significance with regard to burial practices, such practices are not standardised, are likely to change as social responses to Ebola evolve, and therefore need to be discussed on a locality by locality…
Briefing
Ebola and Older People in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea
The limited evidence available on age-disaggregated fatality rates of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) consistently highlights the poor survival rates of older people compared with young adults.
