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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…
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?…
Research paper
IDSR as a platform for implementing IHR in African countries
Of the 46 countries in the World Health Organization (WHO) African region (AFRO), 43 are implementing Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) guidelines to improve their abilities to detect, confirm, and respond to high priority communicable and non-communicable diseases. IDSR…
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…
Briefing
Ebola and Extractive Industry
The economic effects of the Ebola health crisis are slowly unfolding as the virus continues to affect Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. The most important sector is mining as these three countries share a rich iron ore geological beltway. The…
Background report
Changing Understandings of HIV and AIDS through Treatment Interactions
The problem of HIV internationally has many wide ranging impacts on people, communities and countries’ development. In the last decade antiretroviral (ARV) treatment has emerged as the major scientific-technical solution, albeit a costly one. Access to ARV treatment is of…
Briefing
The Pathology of Inequality: Gender and Ebola in West Africa
The international response to Ebola has been decried for being ‘too slow, too little, too late’. As well as racing to respond, we need to consider what has happened over the past decades to leave exposed fault lines that enabled…
Background report
Polio Vaccines – Difficult to Swallow The Story of a Controversy in Northern Nigeria
Global health and poverty reduction discourses have recognised immunisation as one of the most affordable and effective means of reducing child mortality and in a broader sense, as an essential contribution to poverty reduction efforts. While immunisation comes with countless…
Background report
The Social Dynamics of Infant Immunisation in Africa: Perspectives from the Republic of Guinea
Infant immunisation is currently a focus of national and global policy attention in relation to Africa as a key means to address ill-health and contribute to the Millennium Development Goals. Yet vaccination coverage is stagnant or falling in many African…
Background report
Childhood vaccination and society in The Gambia: public engagement with science and delivery
This paper examines public engagement with routine vaccination delivery, and vaccine trials and related medical research, in The Gambia. Its approach is rooted in social and medical anthropology and ethnographic methods, but combines insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge,…
Evidence review
Impact and Implications of the Ebola Crisis
Political impact and implications: Initial analysis suggests that governments’ poor management of the Ebola crisis has generated frustrations and exposed citizens’ lack of trust in their governments. The Ebola crisis is likely to play a very political role in the…
Background report
Zoonotic Diseases: Who Gets Sick, and Why? Explorations from Africa
Global risks of zoonotic disease are high on policy agendas. Increasingly, Africa is seen as a 'hotspot', with likely disease spillovers from animals to humans. This paper explores the social dynamics of disease exposure, demonstrating how risks are not generalised,…
