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Evidence review
Frozen By the Hot Zone
Joanna Radin explores the role of the “hot zone” in immobilizing people, blood and information.
Evidence review
Ebola, Running Ahead
What does experimentation look like in the time of emergency? Ann H. Kelly explores the design of clinical trials amidst the Ebola crisis.
Evidence review
The Disease that Emerged
Lyle Fearnley explores how global preparedness for emerging diseases left some places unprepared.
Briefing
Ebola, Chimeras, and Unexpected Speculation
Alex Nading explains how brincidofovir’s path to the front lines of the Ebola crisis underscores the contingent, speculative, “chimeric” nature of contemporary global health.
Evidence review
Storage and Stockpiling as Techniques of Preparedness: Managing the Bottlenecks of Flu Pandemics
In the last twenty years, influenza has been considered by global health experts as a model for the emergence of new pathogens from animal reservoirs. In the logic of zoonoses, human disease is the tip of the iceberg constituted by…
Briefing
Ebola 2014: Chronicle of a Well-Prepared Disaster
The current crisis is not a nightmare unfolding in front of our eyes, as in a “disaster movie.” It is not an anomaly or an accident which has afflicted public health services unexpectedly. It is also not, to use development…
Evidence review
Culture and Mental Health in Haiti
This paper reviews and summarizes the available literature on Haitian mental health and mental health services. This review was conducted in light of the Haitian earthquake in January 2010. We searched Medline, Google Scholar and other available databases to gather…
Briefing
Caring as Existential Insecurity: Quarantine, Care, and Human Insecurity in the Ebola Crisis
In August of this year, when the Ebola outbreak escalated in Liberia and a state of emergency had been declared for the country, Fatu Kekula, a young Liberian nursing student, improvised personal protective equipment (PPE) to care for her father,…
Evidence review
Notes from Case Zero: Anthropology in the time of Ebola
The lead for a story on the Ebola outbreak is, by now, familiar: on the 22nd of March, the Guinean Ministry of Health declared an outbreak of Ebola, the first ever in the region. The virus has since spread through…
Evidence review
The Limits of Rations and Cash for Food Programs: Food Related Illness in The Gihembe Refugee Camp
Since the implementation of the mVisa program, refugees overwhelmingly believe malnutrition rates are as high as they have ever been in Gihembe, that the same illnesses abound, but that there is less excrement – or watery diarrhea – visible in…
Briefing
After the End of Disease: Rethinking the Epidemic Narrative
In conversations with people living with polio in Hungary, I often encountered members of the tight-knit community referring to themselves as “dinosaurs”. We are a breed that is about to die out, they said. Nobody gets polio anymore, some added,…
Briefing
Untimely Ends and the Pandemic Imaginary
“Untimely ends” can then be best approached as transformative topoi between the symbolic order of really existing epidemics and the pandemic imaginary, as a vision of the (biological and ontological) end of humanity. Rather than just bridging experience and anticipation,…
Briefing
Plotting Global Health Attention through Pandemics
In late August 2011, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Hurricane Irene tore northwards up the Atlantic, its projected path fixed over the U.S. East Coast. So great was the force of the tropical storm’s anticipation that…
Briefing
The Financialization of Ebola
Far away from the frontlines of the Ebola outbreaks in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, where people and their caretakers die from the disease, new forms of humanitarian aid and global health financing are being leveraged behind closed doors. In…
Briefing
Ten Things that Anthropologists Can Do to Fight the West African Ebola Epidemic
In this article, I share a 10-point list of actions that anthropologists could take, right now, to improve the global response to the West African Ebola outbreak. Take notice, global health and national and international biosecurity communities. There exists an…
Background report
What Factors Might Have Led to the Emergence of Ebola in West Africa?
An Ebola outbreak of unprecedented scope emerged in West Africa in December 2013 and presently continues unabated in the countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Ebola is not new to Africa, and outbreaks have been confirmed as far back…
Evidence review
A Plan to Strengthen Community Resilience to Drought in Southern Africa
This plan aims to reinforce community resilience to food insecurity by strengthening the following areas: access to and availability of food; household food security and nutrition and livelihoods; community-based disaster risk reduction; access to safe water and hygiene, and health…
Briefing
Famine in Somalia: Causes and Solutions
The UN announcement of famine in Somalia is both a wake-up call to the scale of this disaster, and a wake-up call to the solutions needed to limit death-from-hunger now and in the future. So, what is famine and how…
Briefing
Understanding the Economic Effects of the 2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa
Since March 2014, over 3,000 people have died from the relentless spread of the Ebola virus throughout the West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria. Despite the heroic efforts of the humanitarian and medical professionals in these countries, crumbling public health…
Futures thinking
Humanitarian trends in Southern Africa: challenges and opportunities
This report gives the findings of field research, secondary data analysis and detailed interrogation of humanitarian emergencies, and proposes six broad clusters of potential threats.
Background report
Health and Climate Change: Key Linkages in Southern Africa
Climate change has major health implications for developing countries but the links are often not well understood. This report describes the current and predicted climate impacts on human health in southern Africa. It presents a view of existing health vulnerabilities…
Background report
A Public Health Approach to the Impact of Climate Change on Health in Southern Africa – Identifying Priority Modifiable Risks
Anthropogenic climate change and anticipated adverse effects on human health as outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are taken as givens. A conceptual model for thinking about the spectrum of climate-related health risks ranging from distal and…
Evidence review
Potential Impact of Climate Change on Livestock Production and Health in East Africa: A Review
Agriculture and livestock are amongst the most climate sensitive economic sectors in the developing countries whilst the rural poor communities are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Climate change is real and is happening now. Current knowledge…
Evidence review
Managing Climate Extremes and Disasters in Africa: Lessons from the IPCC SREX report
The Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to AdvanceClimate Change Adaptation(SREX) was commissioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)in response to a recognised need to provide specific advice on climate change, extreme weather…
Evidence review
Climate Change and Health in SADC Region: Review of the Current State of Knowledge
Evidence shows that the SADC region is experiencing increasing frequency of hot days and decreasing frequency of extremely cold days. Rainfall trends are variable but evidence points to an increased inter-annual variability, with extremely wet periods and more intense droughts…
Evidence review
El Niño: Overview of Impact, Projected Humanitarian Needs and Response as of 02 June 2016
The humanitarian impact of the 2015-2016 El Niño remains deeply alarming, now affecting over 60 million people. Central America, East Africa (particularly Ethiopia), the Pacific and Southern Africa remain the most affected regions. The El Niño phenomenon is now in decline, but projections indicate the situation will worsen…
Background report
Climate Change and Health across Africa: Issues and Options
This working paper lays out the current state of knowledge regarding direct and indirect impacts of environmental factors on health across Africa. While there are many uncertainties in magnitudes of climate change, particularly with timing, the existing literature makes interesting…
Briefing
Impacts on Health of Climate Extremes
This chapter summarizes what is known about the historical effects of climate extremes on human health. The following section describes studies of infectious diseases and climate extremes related to El Niño Southern Oscillation. The next considers the impacts of short-term…
Briefing
Community-Based Approach to Improve Access to Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission Programmes in Dukwi Refugee Camp, Botswana
Prior to the UNHCR community-based PMTCT protocol, pregnant refugee women living with HIV were unable to access essential PMTCT services. Refugee women are now able to have access to a comprehensive PMTCT programme.
Background report
Health Vulnerabilities among Migrant/Mobile Populations in Urban Settings of East and Southern Africa: A Regional Synthesis of Evidence from Literature
Using the principles of reputational case selection sampling procedure and thematic search of electronic databases and websites, we implemented a regional synthesis of evidence on the health vulnerabilities of migrant and mobile populations in urban areas of East and Southern…
Background report
Refugee Health and Wellbeing: Differences between Urban and Camp-Based Environments in Sub-Saharan Africa
Refugees are increasingly migrating to urban areas, but little research has been conducted to compare health and wellbeing outcomes of urban refugees with those based in camps. This analytic cross-sectional study investigated differences in health-related quality of life (QoL) for…
Evidence review
An Analysis of Migration Health in Kenya
An Analysis of Migration Health in Kenya was commissioned by theMinistry of Public Health and Sanitation (MoPHS) and the InternationalOrganization for Migration (IOM) to provide an overview of the issue of migration health in Kenya. Information was derived from an…
Background report
Perceived Risk Factors and Risk Pathways of Rift Valley Fever in Cattle in Ijara District, Kenya
Ijara district in Kenya was one of the hotspots of Rift Valley fever (RVF) during the 2006/2007 outbreak, which led to human and animal deaths causing major economic losses. The main constraint for the control and prevention of RVF is…
Background report
Recent Outbreaks of Rift Valley Fever in East Africa and the Middle East
Rift Valley fever (RVF) is an important neglected, emerging, mosquito-borne disease with severe negative impact on human and animal health. Mosquitoes in the Aedes genus have been considered as the reservoir, as well as vectors, since their transovarially infected eggs…
Background report
Sociocultural and Economic Dimensions of Rift Valley Fever
Health researchers have advocated for a cross-disciplinary approach to the study and prevention of infectious zoonotic diseases, such as Rift Valley Fever. It is believed that this approach can help bring out the social determinants and effects of the zoonotic…
Background report
The Implications of Climate Change for Health in Africa
The interactions between health and climate change are clearly recognised; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change includes a chapter on health issues in all its publications. But we still need to better understand all the possible impacts of climate change…
