Understanding West Africa's Ebola Epidemic: Towards a Political Economy

ISBN-13: 9781786991683 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 344 str.

Ibrahim Abdullah; Ismail Rashid

Opis

From 2013 to 2015, over eleven thousand people across West Africa lost their lives to the deadliest outbreak of the Ebola virus in history. Crucially, this epidemic marked the first time the virus was able to spread beyond rural areas to major cities, infecting tens of thousands and overturning conventional assumptions about its epidemiology. With backgrounds ranging from development to disease control, the contributors to this volume, many of whom are based in countries affected by the Ebola epidemic, consider the underlying factors that shaped this unprecedented outbreak.
While championing the heroic efforts of local communities and international aid workers in halting the spread of the disease, the contributors also point to deep structural problems in both the countries affected and the humanitarian agencies involved that exacerbated the epidemic and hampered the effort to contain it. Alarmingly, they show that little has been learned from these events, with health provision in these countries remaining chronically underfunded and poorly equipped to deal with future outbreaks. Such issues, they argue, reflect the wider challenges we face in tackling epidemic disease in an increasingly interconnected world.

Spis treści

Maps Introduction: Understanding West Africa’s Ebola Epidemic - Ibrahim Abdullah and Ismail Rashid Part I: The Regional History and Origins of Ebola 1. Ebola and Regional History: Connections and Common Experiences - Allen Howard 2. Eurocentric Epistemology: Questioning the Narrative on the Epidemic’s Origin - Chernoh Alpha M. Bah Part II: The Neoliberal Affliction: Different Countries, Similar Convulsions 3. Interpreting the Health, Social, and Political Dimensions of the Ebola Crisis in Guinea - Alpha Amadou Bano Barry 4. The Political Economy of the Ebola Epidemic in Liberia - George Klay Kieh, Jr. 5. Confronting Ebola with Bare Hands: Sierra Leone’s Health Sector on the Eve of the Ebola Epidemic - Ibrahim Abdullah and Abou Bakarr Kamara Part III: Development, Gender and its Discontents 6. Structural Violence, Public Health, and the Militarization of Assistance - Julia Amos 7. “I am a woman. How can I not help?” Gender Performance and the Spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone - Aisha Fofana Ibrahim 8. "God Bless Whatsapp": Neoliberal Ebola and the Struggle for Autonomous Space in Sierra Leone - Ibrahim Abdullah Part IV: Transnational Actors and the Politics of Crisis Response 9. African Union, ECOWAS, and the International Political Economy of the Emergency Response to Ebola - Semiha Abdulmelik 10. The World Health Organization and the Ebola Epidemic - Meredeth Turshen and Tefera Gezmu 11. The Ebola Epidemic Moment in the US-(West) Africa Relations - Fodei Batty 12. UNMEER and the International Response to the Ebola Epidemic - Ismail Rashid