Resources

Improving burial practices and cemetery management during an Ebola virus disease epidemic — Sierra Leone, 2014

This piece is a summary of an assessment conducted in Sierra Leone on the acceptability of safe, nontraditional burial practices and cemetery management during the Ebola Outbreak. Both measures aimed the control of the virus transmission. Some of the findings were: scarce burial teams, miscoordination among Ebola response bodies, lack of systematic procedures for testing and reporting results on dead bodies from Laboratories, inadequate cementerie space, no acceptance of safe burial practices by communities. These finding informed a standard operating procedure (SOP) for safe, dignified medical burials.

Read more

Treating corpses like bundles of firewood. On the social production of indifference in the time of Ebola (Guinea)

The authors reflect on the impacts of the declaration of global emergency on the way dead bodies were treated during the Ebola virus disease epidemic in Guinea: focusing on problems related to anonymous graves and the impossibility of organizing burial ceremonies.

Read more

Community-centered responses to Ebola in urban Liberia: The view from below

The article presents information on community-based epidemic control priorities and identifies innovative local strategies for containing EVD in Liberia. The text also offers some suggestions from participants like the integration of families in the surveillance system and the declaration of National Memorial Day among others.

Read more

Lassa fever outbreak in Southwestern Nigeria: The Ekiti state response amidst economic recession

This article describes part of the response to an outbreak of Lassa fever in Nigeria in 2016.  The paper underlines the importance of Intersectoral collaboration and political will in response to outbreaks at the provincial or state, but also records challenges to control efforts including inadequate local laboratory capacity and fear among health workers, panic response among the general populace as well as deficient emergency preparedness.

Read more

The politics of fear: Médecins Sans Frontières and the West African Ebola epidemic

This book provides a primary documentary resource for recounting and learning from the Ebola epidemic. Comprising eleven topic-based chapters and four eyewitness vignettes from both MSF- and non-MSF-affiliated contributors, it aims to provide a politically agnostic account of the defining health event of the 21st century so far to inform current opinions and future responses.

Read more

Understanding the cryptic nature of Lassa fever in West Africa

In this article the authors give an overview of the current knowledge on Lassa fever (ecology, epidemiology and distribution) and the importance of future socio-ecological changes in the increase of Lassa fever burden.

Read more

Using modelling to disentangle the relative contributions of zoonotic and anthroponotic transmission: The case of Lassa fever

The authors present the results of a modelling approach, using published data from outbreak and patients to Kenema governmental Hospital in Sierra Leone. They estimate the likely contribution to human to human transmission. They shed light on the need to better assess the human to human transmission.

Read more

Getting to zero: A doctor and a diplomat on the Ebola frontline

This book exposes the often shocking shortcomings of the humanitarian response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, both locally and internationally, and calls attention to the immense courage of those who put their lives on the line every day to contain the disease.

Read more