The Ebola outbreak in West Africa (2013-2016) has now ended and disappeared from headline news, so what lessons should humanitarian actors take away?
The outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa is the largest, longest, most severe, and most complex in the nearly four-decade history of this disease. To date, nearly 24,000 cases and nearly 10,000 deaths have been reported in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Over 3,000 medals have been given to UK individuals who went in West Africa during the Ebola crises on behalf of the UK military, UK-Med, Public Health England, NHS, Her Majesty’s Government and numerous NGOs. The total humanitarian response effort was realised by thousands more workers based in West African nations, however, the rapid influx of humanitarian response workers from the UK presented complex challenges beyond the crisis of containing the deadly virus.
Some of the lessons to be learned are specific to West Africa, some are specific to dealing with Ebola, and some are relevant to the humanitarian sector. We will consider three lessons from the latter.
Public Distrust
Despite anthropologists working to cascade awareness of the Ebola virus to local communities, a lack of trust between international medical workers and communities led to panic in Guinea. It was thought by some that treatment facility staff were introducing the disease. Rumours spread that infection-control teams spraying chlorine were wearing head-to-toe protection because they were in fact spraying the disease’s causative agent. Rumours lead to riots and humanitarian workers were soon fleeing for their lives. The factor of securitization quickly became important for coordinating emergency responses and highlighted the need for closer civic engagement in rapid international interventions.
The Cost of Ignoring Politics
Ebola struck two post-conflict countries (Liberia and Sierra Leone) that have battled political, economic and social dysfunction in the wake of long, brutal civil wars. However, reports pay inadequate attention to the politics of the countries affected, and of the international response. Guinea adopted a different approach marked by a strong sense of sovereignty and an initial reluctance to work with foreign partners, contributing to an escalation of new Ebola cases. Comparatively, Sierra Leone and Liberia accepted international assistance more readily which could indicate their histories of working with foreign partners during recent conflict. The onset of Ebola in Liberia also coincided with a strike by health care workers to protest the failure of government to pay salaries. This lack of government support contributed not only to the demoralization of health workers, but also to some deaths. This shows that the political dimensions of complex emergencies are extremely relevant.
Civil-Military Coordination
International military personnel trained local Liberian healthcare workers each week in Ebola prevention, containment and treatment and quickly became an important part of the humanitarian response. The scale and immediacy of direct coordination between military and humanitarian actors represented an extraordinary evolution in civil–military coordination. It allowed for military-derived innovations in disease control and medicine to be adapted for humanitarian practice, representing an under-explored area of engagement. As a result of bioterrorism and bio-warfare security concerns, military research into the virus had taken place long before the West Africa outbreak. Closer humanitarian-military engagement may be valuable for other disease epidemics in the future.
Jenny Thornton is an occasional blogger for Proelium Law LLP. Jenny holds a MA in Geography & Social Anthropology from St Andrews University and is a current International Relations postgraduate at the University of Cambridge. Her particular interests include international development, international law, and politically complex environments in sub-Saharan Africa. Follow Jenny on Twitter @JenThornt.
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