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Displaying 1 - 10 of 11 results.

When the field is a ward or a clinic: Hospital ethnography

This resource attempts to demonstrate the value of deeply embedded hospital ethnography as a means to offer a new level of data with which to synthesise critical medical anthropology. The author uses this collection to showcase how hospital-based ethnographic work offers a collaborative approach in which the ethnographer, of necessity, must take into account a broader range of experiences in hospital encounters.

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The process and practice of diagnosis: Innovations in diagnostics for Lassa fever in Sierra Leone

Chapter 5 of Annie Wilkinson’s PhD thesis, provides a detailed description of health seeking behaviours for Lassa Fever in rural Sierra Leone. In this context, people interpreted and managed Lassa Fever in light of their familiarity with a wide range of other diseases, some of which were viewed as dangerous and others less so; in contexts where sickness, health and treatment were marked by uncertainty; and where hospitals were not necessarily perceived to be sites of good care.  An important insight is that people differentiated ‘big sick’ or ‘hospital sick’ from an ordinary or ‘small’ sick and it was partly on the basis of this distinction that people would choose to access care.

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Social consequences of Ebola containment measures in Liberia

This study of quarantine during the Ebola epidemic in Liberia also shows that state-enforced quarantine, with a mandatory prohibition of movement, raised condemnation, strengthened stigmatization and created serious socio-economic distress.

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Burials in times of Ebola: Do's and don'ts - issues of acceptability

This short guide was elaborated by the authors at the beginning of the Ebola Virus disease outbreak in May 2014 in Gueckedou base on a fieldwork in the area. It compiles the wishes collected from villages where people died from Ebola virus diseases.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Patients’ and healthcare providers’ perceptions and practices regarding hypertension, pharmacy-based care, and mHealth in Lagos, Nigeria

Although not focused on Lassa Fever, a recent publication on hypertension in Nigeria, provides a comprehensive review of contemporary health seeking behaviour in the country, underlining the important role that small-scale local pharmaceutical providers provide as the front line of medical care.  This study also describes what respondents call a ‘Nigerian Factor’; a reluctance to seek health care until very sick.

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Lassa fever: The politics of an emerging disease and the scope for One Health

As a rodent borne virus, Lassa fever is of particular interest from a One Health perspective. The interplay between security, public health and One Health approaches are explored through ethnographic and interview based research in Kenema, Sierra Leone, a long-term treatment and research hub. ‘Biodefence dollars’ have provided the majority of recent funding in Sierra Leone and have created opportunities for both local and international actors to address a neglected disease.

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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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