Resources

WHO: 1996 - Lassa fever in Sierra Leone - update 2

The conclusion of the WHO support mission is that a major epidemic of Lassa Fever has occurred in Kailahun and Kenema Districts and is continuing as unusually large numbers of severely ill patients are still being admitted to hospital, with a large number of deaths still occurring.

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Emerging disease or emerging diagnosis?: Lassa fever and Ebola in Sierra Leone

This article looks beyond Ebola in 2014 to the history of efforts to control VHFs in the Mano River and challenges the idea that there was a vacuum of knowledge. Highlighted instead are politics of knowledge which have run through global health and which have prioritized particular forms of knowledge and ways of dealing with disease. Ethnographic research on the emergence of Lassa and the subsequent emergence of Ebola in West Africa is presented, focusing on the development of technologies and institutions to detect and manage both viruses.

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Land tenure in Sierra Leone: the law, dualism, and the making of a land policy

This book gives a brief account of the background to the dual land tenure system in force in Sierra Leone and explains the reasons why the dualism derived from the different colonial experience of the former Colony and Protectorate of Sierra Leone still persists. It also gives an account of the main features of the English derived land law in the Western Area and of the forms of land holding in the Provinces which are governed predominately by customary law.

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Speaking with vampires: Rumor and history in colonial Africa

This book presents and interprets vampire stories from East and Central Africa as a way of understanding the world as the storytellers did. Using gossip and rumour as historical sources in their own right, it assesses the place of such evidence, oral and written, in historical reconstruction.

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Lassa fever

In a study of Lassa fever in Sierra Leone, West Africa, this paper identifies two variables associated with a high risk of death, and evaluates the efficacy of ribavirin and Lassa virus–convalescent plasma for the treatment of Lassa fever.

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