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Title:	Anthropology of Ebola: transmission dynamics and outbreak socialities, 2015-2016
Keywords:	SIERRA LEONE HUNTING ZOONOTIC DISEASES WEST AFRICA ANTHROPOLOGY EBOLA VIRUS 2020
Description:	This archive presents: (1) Transcripts of 47 semi-structured interviews and 12 spontaneously occurring focus group discussions, including notes from direct observations and informal discussions conducted throughout the study; (2) transcripts from 9 in-depth interviews with Sierra Leonean volunteers and health responders - including hospital managers, health staff, contact tracers and a journalist coordinating public health messaging - involved in the Ebola Response; (3) transcripts with Ebola survivors attending the Ebola survivor’s clinic at the 34th military hospital and many of whom were involved in emergency clinical research. Following the 2013–2016 outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa, governments across the region imposed a ban on the hunting, sale, and consumption of meat from wild animals. Fieldwork was principally conducted in 9 villages in the Eastern and Southern provinces of Sierra Leone Southern Province (Bo, Pujehun, and Moyamba districts) and Eastern Province (Kenema district) of Sierra Leone between August and December 2015 to understand the local reception and impact of these interventions.<p>West Africa is currently experiencing its first and largest outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF). This epidemic demands immediate public health action and critically, social science expertise. While conducting research in Guinea and neighbouring Sierra Leone on Lassa fever (a related, but endemic haemorragic fever) members of this team were invited by the Guinean Ministry of Environment, Water and Forest, and the Ministry of Health to support Ebola containment efforts, specifically by exploring the forms and social significance of human-animal contact and health systems responses. Over the past months, members of this team have worked closely with NGOs and Government actors, helping to illuminate the primary routes of infection and support efforts to reduce transmission. This project would extend and deepen our initial observations, and allow us to investigate in situ the organisation of containment efforts and their impact on material culture, social practices and institutions. Through an expanded ethnographic frame on the everyday sociality of Ebola containment, we will pursue pressing questions about the cultural processes of disease transmission and curtailment including: 1) How has the epidemic affected livelihood strategies, including farming, hunting, modes of trading, and domestic economies? 2) What effect have public health interventions aimed at reducing primary transmission had on the human-animal interactions? 3) How do people experience emergency care provided and how does this impact how they use public health care? This urgent project builds together anthropological, epidemiological and public health expertise to understand the effect of the West African Ebola outbreak upon communities who are currently living through this unprecedented epidemic. Our primary aim is to document people's experiences of the wide-ranging public health and disease control interventions that are currently being implemented - e.g. hunting bans, case finding and contract tracing, emergency isolation, sensitization and clinical care, suspension of traditional burial rites, etc. This empirical orientation constitutes a considerable departure from the conventional anthropological remit during an outbreak, which has generally been circumscribed to helping make public health policies more palatable for local populations. In contrast, our efforts to come to grips with the social impact of this epidemic will be grounded in an attention to the roles that objects, material practices, animals and environments have to play in shaping the trajectory of the outbreak and its social impact. An extended 'social' lens will offer greater purchase on the routes of transmission and the obstacles to containment, and could lay the basis for more comprehensive collaborations between social scientists and public health professionals. Ultimately, we believe that a finely-grained, real-time ethnographic account into the social dynamics triggered by this worst-ever Ebola outbreak can help refine public health interventions to more effectively contain future outbreaks.</p>
URI:	https://t2-4.bsc.es/jspui/handle/123456789/60412
Other Identifiers:	10.5255/UKDA-SN-852917 852917 https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-852917
Appears in Collections:	Cessda

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