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Diary – Paul Farmer

Nathanael Cretin — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 15:17:02 +0000

I have just returned from Liberia with a group of physicians and health activists. We are heading back in a few days. The country is in the midst of the largest ever epidemic of Ebola haemorrhagic fever. It’s an acute and brutal affliction. Ebola is a zoonosis – it leaps from animal hosts to humans – which is caused by a filovirus (a thread-like virus that causes internal and external bleeding). It was first described in 1976 in rural Congo, not far from the Ebola River, as an acute-onset syndrome characterised by complaints of weakness, followed by fever and abdominal pain. Patients became dehydrated as a consequence of fever, vomiting and diarrhoea. Many became delirious and started to haemorrhage from the mouth, nose, vagina, at sites where intravenous lines had been placed, even from the eyes.

The Ebola virus is terrifying because it infects most of those who care for the afflicted and kills most of those who fall ill: at least, that’s the received wisdom. But it isn’t clear that the received wisdom is right. It’s true that many of those who have died were medical professionals. The 1976 epidemic, for example, started in a mission hospital where Belgian nuns worked as nurses alongside Congolese colleagues. But even then it was known that the virus could be transmitted as the result of a failure to follow the rules of modern infection control: the nurses reused needles and did not wear gloves, gowns or masks, which were all in short supply. Nor did the nurses, still less their patients, receive what in Brussels, Boston or Paris would count as modern medical care.

Reference

Farmer, P., 2014. Diary. London Review of Books [Online] vol. 36 no. 20 pp. 38-39. Available from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n20/paul-farmer/diary [Accessed 30 October 2014].

Read the full article

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n20/paul-farmer/diary

Somatosphere’s Web Roundup: Ebola Update

Nathanael Cretin — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 11:29:48 +0000

By Sara M Bergstresser

This article is part of the series: Ebola fieldnotes

A great deal has happened since the first Web Roundup on Ebola. The epidemic has spread both in West Africa and globally, and material about Ebola has spread throughout the web. According to the CDC, as of October 22, a total of 9911 cases of Ebola have been reported, primarily in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone (map of new cases), and there have been an estimated 4546 deaths. WHO has declared an end to the outbreak in Nigeria and Senegal, but there are now cases in Europe and North America. In Spain and the United States, there have been local cases of viral transmission within healthcare facilities.

Full article

http://somatosphere.net/2014/10/web-roundup-ebola-update.html

The significance of death, funerals and the after-life in Ebola-hit Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia: Anthropological insights into infection and social resistance

Nathanael Cretin — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 18:12:56 +0000

The aim of this briefing paper is to consider the various ways in which widely reported fear and resistance to the Ebola response can be understood, and what each way of understanding offers to those battling with the current epidemic. As far as this paper is concerned, there is no single ‘right way’ to comprehend resistance to educators, medics and burial teams, as this is a very complex social phenomenon. The aim instead is to outline the variety of ways in which resistance can be (has been) conceived and what each might suggest for better communication and response. The paper couches these different modes of understanding within a wide repertoire of perspectives that social theorists take to understanding social phenomena, as this provides an analytical framework that is as encompassing as possible.As will become clear, some of the ways this can be understood are more significant than others to the immediate interests of medical services and the policy levers. Yet all are significant for understanding the perspectives of those experiencing Ebola and to enable respectful and productive interactions.

This is a draft briefing paper – 09 October 2014

By James Fairhead

Full article: http://www.heart-resources.org/doc_lib/significance-death-funerals-life-ebola-hit-sierra-leone-guinea-liberia-anthropological-insights-infection-social-resistance/