Ebola

Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience

In the wake of the Ebola outbreak, the editorial board curators of this special section ask three interdisciplinary scholars to reflect on the global pandemic.

Infectious Disease Reports, 2015

As of Jan. 4, there have been over 20,000 cases and 8,000 deaths due to Ebola in West Africa, with the majority of cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The United States has tried to do its part to assist and halt the epidemic globally and to protect us locally. U.S.-based health care workers have been volunteering their service abroad, despite the fact that some have been faced with quarantine requirements upon their return. In addition, a handful of patients with Ebola have been carefully transported from West Africa to health facilities in the U.S. for treatment and care. University of California Medical Centers are designated as first responders to potential Ebola cases and are prepared with Ebola kits just in case Ebola reached California. Nurses in Las Vegas staged a “die in” to help raise awareness of our lack of preparedness and their susceptibility to Ebola as front-line workers. While many have seen these efforts as overly cautious, these groups helped prepare us for...

Introduction to the volume "Ebola's Message: Public Health and Medicine in the Twenty-First Century"

2014

This is a REVISED version of the notes I've been collecting on the West African Ebola outbreak, in the context of my undergraduate course, "Global History of Health." The current version is a Word document that has live links to most of the materials cited. This version of the Teaching Notes is co-authored with Nicholas Goettl, at the time a freshman at ASU who volunteered to help with the project. My deepest thanks to him, and to Jacqueline Riggins (who also volunteered her services that semester), for important conversations about how to assist in this crisis in a way that would help other scholars and educators around the world.

2014

These are notes I've put together in the past two weeks (building on news links I started collecting in April) as a way of creating an understanding of the current Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa. Beyond the fact that Ebola was discovered nearly 40 years ago, this is not a "new" situation. Yes, this is the first time that Ebola has been seen in West Africa. But scientists and epidemiologists have been discussing "emerging diseases" for more than two decades. (In fact, diseases have been "emerging" for millennia.) There are some critical pieces still missing in the Ebola puzzle: most seriously, the fact that the animal reservoir of the disease still hasn't been confirmed. But the larger causes of the outbreak and the way it has unfolded can be understood by placing them into larger frames of analysis. Historical analysis. For my teaching, I am using the commercial software “Blackboard” that my university supplies us for creating password-protected course content. I have posted here screen captures of all the folders I’ve created for my students. These do not, alas, have live links in the printouts. I hope that the information that displays is sufficient to allow you to find the websites on your own. I’ve divided the material into 4 main folders: (1) news/information outlets that are well worth bookmarking in order to stay up on the latest news; (2) a folder of news items I’ve been collecting over the past several months; (3) some items from around the time of the initial discovery of Ebola in 1976 (the films in particular may be helpful, if your library owns them); and (4) some of the key pieces reflecting current scientific knowledge of the disease (genetics, epidemiology, clinical course of the disease, etc.). To stress, I am not trying to cover all aspects of the disease. From my global health perspective, I am trying to assess the deeper roots of this disease: what larger environmental (including human) factors have contributed to the disease's emergence overall, and what have led to this particular outbreak. I recommend a recent piece by Jeffrey D. Sachs, which succinctly captures why this "local" outbreak needs to be analyzed from a larger global health perspective: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/jeffrey-d-sachs-outlines-the-steps-needed-to-stem-the-current-epidemic-and-prevent-its-recurrence.