This Practical Approaches brief highlights key considerations for rapidly appraising burial/funerary practices and beliefs around death/dying during an epidemic. It provides guidance on the relevant social science knowledge required to adapt epidemic preparedness and response to the local context. By using this tool, an overview of local knowledge, meaning and practice will be gained, which […]
Literature on cultural practices for burial and care for the sick among individual ethnic groups in South Sudan was very limited. However, it clearly points to the importance of proper burials among all ethnic groups: these typically entail washing the body of the deceased; it can take several days before burial takes place; and graves […]
These questionnaires allow for a rapid quantitative survey (see excel sheet) and qualitative (see word document) appraisal of burial and funeral practices in the context of an Ebola outbreak. The survey uses simple questions that can be used by national volunteers in the response to understand death, burial, funerals (rites or ceremonies), and mourning: gauging […]
Social Anthropologist Julienne Anoko visits communities to encourage safe and dignified burial. Infection of the Ebola virus can occur from touching the bodies of those who have died from Ebola virus disease (EVD). […]
The Social Science and Humanitarian Action platform has produced this brief to outline the key socio-cultural considerations concerning events related to death, burial, funerals (rites or ceremonies), and mourning in Equateur province, DRC, in the context of the Ebola outbreak. […]
Rift Valley Fever (RVF), is a viral zoonotic disease transmitted by Aedes and Culex mosquitoes. in Kenya, its occurrence is associated with increased rains. in Baringo County, RVF was first reported in 2006-2007 resulting in 85 human cases and 5 human deaths, besides livestock losses and livelihood disruptions. This study sought to investigate the county’s […]
Safely burying Ebola infected individuals is acknowledged to be important for controlling Ebola epidemics and was a major component of the 2013–2016 West Africa Ebola response. Yet, in order to understand the impact of safe burial programs it is necessary to elucidate the role of unsafe burials in sustaining chains of Ebola transmission and how the risk posed by activities surrounding unsafe burials, including care provided at home prior to death, vary with human behavior and geography. […]
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 see them and the kind of treatment they provide. It goes on to explore the […]
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 Ebola to move so rapidly across boundaries of people’s bodies, villages, towns and countries. Gender […]