Resources

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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United States Environmental Protection Agency: Integrated pest management (IPM) principles

This information packet outlines the principles of pest management as put forward by the United States' Environmental Protection Agency. 

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New opportunities for field research on the pathogenesis and treatment of Lassa fever

This resource reviews the present literature on treatment and pathogenesis of Lassa fever and outlines priorities for future research in the field made possible by the improved research capacity of the Mano River Union countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, Lassa fever network. 

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Engaging ‘communities’: Anthropological insights from the West African Ebola epidemic

This resource reflects on the nature of community engagement during the Ebola epidemic and demonstrates a disjuncture between local realities and what is being imagined in post-Ebola reports about the lessons that need to be learned for the future. It argues that to achieve stated aims of building trust and strengthening outbreak response and health systems, public health institutions need to reorientate their conceptualization of ‘the community’ and develop ways of working which take complex social and political relationships into account.

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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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Epidemics: Science, governance, and social justice

This book focuses on how different policy-makers, scientists, and local populations construct alternative narratives-accounts of the causes and appropriate responses to outbreaks- about epidemics at the global, national and local level. The contrast between emergency-oriented, top-down responses to what are perceived as potentially global outbreaks and longer-term approaches to diseases, such as AIDS, which may now be considered endemic, is highlighted.

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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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