Resources

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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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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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.

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