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Briefing
Working with Communities in Gueckedou for Better Understanding of Ebola
International partners are supporting Gueckedou health authorities to implement response actions. Médecins Sans Frontières has established a treatment centre and ensures the transport of suspected cases.
Briefing
Anthropologists work with Ebola-Affected Communities in Mali
Ebola virus control teams need a mix of expertise, including epidemiologists, logistics specialists, laboratory workers, hygiene experts and various other specialized professions. Social anthropologists play a less well-known but equally important role.
Briefing
Guinea: Reopening Schools Safely – Partnering with Families and Communities
After many months of prolonged closure due to fear of Ebola transmission, schools have reopened in Guinea last month. WHO and partners have played a crucial role in preparing schools to open their doors to students.
Briefing
Sierra Leone: Increasing Community Engagement for Ebola On-Air
WHO’s social mobilization team is using radio to reach communities with information about how to prevent the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone.
Briefing
Helping Guinean Communities Fight Ebola
Through household visits, a presence on prefecture streets and conversations with influential members of key community groups, surveillance teams are spreading the message about Ebola and providing support to families
Briefing
Sierra Leone: Inspiring Confidence and Trust in Ebola Care
In Sierra Leone’s Magazine Wharf, there are mixed perceptions around Ebola response systems. Ambulance services are met with especial scepticism. Many fear that a trip in the ambulance will end in death in an Ebola treatment centre or holding unit.…
Briefing
Sierra Leone: Tracing Ebola in Tonkolili
When the Tonkolili District reported a new case of Ebola on 24 July 2015, it marked a change in the Sierra Leone Ebola response. A rapid response team was despatched to manage this new source of infection, the first case…
Briefing
Ebola: Limitations of Correcting Misinformation
This comment piece identifies problematic assumptions behind communication and social mobilisation strategies which rely on using biomedicine to correct local logics and concerns and which cast them as misinformation. The effectiveness of using standardised advice for non-standardised situations is questioned.
Evidence review
The Opposite of Denial: Social Learning at the Onset of the Ebola Emergency in Liberia
This working paper reports on a study to identify the pace of Ebola-related social learning in urban and peri-urban areas around Monrovia, Liberia during August 2014, at the onset of the emergency phase of the epidemic. The research demonstrates how…
Evidence review
Community-Centered Responses to Ebola in Urban Liberia: The View from Below
This working paper reports on a study to identify epidemic control priorities among 15 communities in Monrovia and Montserrado County, Liberia. Data were collected in September 2014 on the following topics: prevention, surveillance, care-giving, community-based treatment and support, networking/hotlines/calling response…
Evidence review
Stigma and Ebola: An Anthropological Approach to Understanding and Addressing Stigma Operationally in the Ebola Response
‘Stigma’ is an umbrella term for the direct and indirect consequences of a number of processes that brand someone as different in ways that result in discrimination, loss of status and social exclusion. It can be short-term or evolve into…
Evidence review
Communication with Rebellious Communities during an Outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea: An Anthropological Approach
This paper by Anoko J. N., reports on the success of a communication programme among 26 rebellious villages in Forest Guinea during fieldwork in June-July 2014.
Evidence review
Village Responses to Ebola Virus Disease and its Prevention
The present document is the eighth and final report in a series presenting descriptive results of a survey of responses to Ebola and Ebola control in 26 villages in all three provinces of rural Sierra Leone, fieldwork for which was…
Evidence review
Community Perceptions of Ebola Response Efforts in Liberia: Montserrado and Nimba Counties
This study aimed to support Oxfam’s Public Health Promotion (PHP) strategy through a rapid qualitative assessment of the remaining social barriers to compliance with Ebola prevention and treatment messages. At the time of the study, most Liberians had a high…
Briefing
Ebola Can Be Transmitted Sexually for Weeks After Recovery – Education is Crucial
Conflicting messages on the length of time that Ebola remains in semen after recovery make education and prevention confusing. We need to avoid mixed messages and focus on girls’ rights, says anthropologist Pauline Oosterhoff. When I met members of a…
Evidence review
Children’s Ebola Recovery Assessment: Sierra Leone
Nearly half the population of Sierra Leone is under the age of 18 years and the impact of the Ebola crisis on their lives now and on their future opportunities has been far-reaching: no school; loss of family members and…
Briefing
Contextualising Ebola Rumours from a Political, Historical and Social Perspective to Understand People’s Perceptions of Ebola and the Responses to it
This briefing explores how rumours about Ebola in Sierra Leone influences people’s perception and response to Ebola, from the political, historical and social perspectives. Despite the efforts of the World Health Organisation to control the Ebola outbreak, achieving zero cases…
Briefing
Communities are the Real Heroes – Doing Social Mobilisation Differently: Lessons and Recommendations from the Ebola Outbreak
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has reinvigorated the debate about the role of ‘social mobilisation’ and ‘community engagement’, not only in response to devastating disease but a range of other intractable issues affecting Africa and the rest of the…
Briefing
Diaspora Communications and Health Seeking Behaviour in the Time of Ebola: Findings from the Sierra Leonean Community in London
The Sierra Leonean diaspora was active in responding to the Ebola outbreak that hit Sierra Leone in March 2014, both by providing financial and material support, and through direct communication with relatives, friends and colleagues back home. This paper looks…
Evidence review
The First Mile: Community Experience of Outbreak Control during an Ebola Outbreak in Luwero District, Uganda
A major challenge to outbreak control lies in early detection of viral haemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) in local community contexts during the critical initial stages of an epidemic, when risk of spreading is its highest (“the first mile”). This paper documents…
Briefing
Ebola and Human Rights: Insight from Experts
Ebola demonstrates the critical link between health and human rights, the lack of governance, and the misdirection that befalls the international community in addressing such outbreaks. Human rights experts agree that the Ebola response falls into Lawrence Gostin’s paradigm whereby…
Background report
Biosocial Approaches to the 2013-2016 Ebola Pandemic
Despite more than 25 documented outbreaks of Ebola since 1976, our understanding of the disease is limited, in particular the social, political, ecological, and economic forces that promote (or limit) its spread.In the following study, we seek to provide new…
Evidence review
Guide to Community Engagement in WASH: A Practitioner’s Guide, Based on Lessons from Ebola
The Ebola response in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea demonstrated that community engagement is critical in responding to epidemics. This was not always a guiding principle in the fight against Ebola, which initially prioritized biomedical and militarized responses. Working in…
Evidence review
Health Epidemics Evaluation Report
In 2012 Uganda experienced many disease outbreaks including Measles, Ebola, Marburg and Nodding disease. Two Ebola outbreaks and one Marburg event were in quick succession and placed the Ministry of Health and the Uganda Red Cross (URCS) as well as…
Evidence review
Evaluation of Ebola Response – Uganda
In recent months Uganda has experienced three separate Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF) outbreaks. Two Ebola outbreaks in the districts of Kibaale and Luwero and one Marburg event in Kabaale. URCS responded in all three cases with assistance from the IFRC…
Briefing
Ebola in West Africa Guinea: Resistance to the Ebola Response
Resistance to the Ebola response has been more widespread and more severe in Guinea, than in Liberia and Sierra Leone, with sometimes violent incidents. This is due to a complex interaction of many factors, including underlying causes and the nature…
Evidence review
Ebola Regional Lesson Learning
The Ebola outbreak currently affecting West Africa is the most serious trans-national medical emergency in modern times. It has the potential to become a global health crisis. Many of the countries affected already have weak health systems, which are now…
Evidence review
Ebola – Traditional Healers, Witch Doctors, Burial Attendants
This helpdesk focuses on the impact of traditional healers, witch doctors and burial attendants on ebola in West Africa. It seeks to establish if there is a difference between witch doctors, herbalists and traditional healers in terms of when people…
Evidence review
Ebola- Local Beliefs and Behaviour Change
The Ebola epidemic ravaging parts of West Africa is the most severe acute public health emergency seen in modern times. Never before in recorded history has a biosafety level four pathogen infected so many people so quickly, over such a…
Briefing
Seven Things We Can Learn from the Ebola Epidemic in Uganda in 2000 – 2001
Diseases such as Ebola highlight the importance of a holistic focus on health systems, as opposed to assuming that health is the preserve and concern of health professionals alone. This was the lesson Uganda learnt very quickly in managing the…
Briefing
Rebuilding After Catastrophe? A Missed Opportunity for Health and Social Change
Ebola is just one of the many crises the world faced through 2015, which also saw the Nepal earthquakes, Yemen civil war, South Sudan conflict and the Syrian refugee crisis to name but a few. So, what have we learnt?…
Evidence review
Ebola: What Lessons for the International Health Regulations?
With more than 3000 deaths since the first case was confirmed in March, 2014, the international community has recognised Ebola as a public health emergency of international concern and a clear threat to global health security. It is the subject…
Briefing
Two Evaluations of Community Ebola Interventions, Two Different Results
This spring, when the team from the Ebola Response Anthropology Platform evaluated Community-Based Ebola Care Centres (CCCs) in Sierra Leone, one thing they constantly heard complaints about was human-resource management. Residents of the communities where the Centres were located grumbled about favouritism: well-paying jobs…
Briefing
Return of the Rebel: Legacies of War and Reconstruction in West Africa’s Ebola Epidemic
The spread of Ebola in West Africa centres on a region with a shared recent history of transnational civil war and internationally led post-conflict reconstruction efforts. This legacy of conflict and shortcomings in the reconstruction efforts are key to understanding…
Briefing
Ebola, Politics and Ecology: Beyond the ‘Outbreak Narrative’
The origin of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has been traced to the likely confluence of a virus, a bat, a two-year-old child and an under equipped rural health centre. Understanding how these factors may have combined in south-eastern…
Briefing
Local Engagement in Ebola Outbreaks and Beyond in Sierra Leone
Containment strategies for Ebola rupture fundamental features of social, political and religious life. Control efforts that involve local people and appreciate their perspectives, social structures and institutions are therefore vital. Unfortunately such approaches have not been widespread in West Africa…
