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Displaying 11 - 19 of 19 results.

Using modelling to disentangle the relative contributions of zoonotic and anthroponotic transmission: The case of Lassa fever

The authors present the results of a modelling approach, using published data from outbreak and patients to Kenema governmental Hospital in Sierra Leone. They estimate the likely contribution to human to human transmission. They shed light on the need to better assess the human to human transmission.

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Fluctuation of abundance and Lassa virus prevalence in Mastomys Natalensis in Guinea, West Africa

This study investigates the link between the ecology of the M. Natalensis and the incidence of Lassa fever in human cases in Guinea. They found that the risk for Lassa virus transmission was present in both rainy and dry season; however the risk increased in the dry season because of the possibility of encountering rodent excreta in the houses.

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Movement patterns of small rodents in Lassa fever-endemic villages in Guinea

The authors investigate in this study the spatial behaviour of M. Natalensis in Upper Guinea. They use to experiments: capture-mark-recapture studies and Rhodamine B. Their findings showed that M.Natalensis moves between houses and proximate fields. This is an important information for rodent control activities that need to be extended from indoors to fields.

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Rat-Atouille: A mixed method study to characterize rodent hunting and consumption in the context of Lassa fever

This paper investigated the consumption of rodents, including the reservoir species of Lassa fever, and found this is widespread and does not neatly tally against generational or gender lines. Further, it found that the reasons for rodent consumption are multifactorial, including taste preferences, food security, and opportunistic behaviour.

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On the origin of Ebola: Biomedical discourse versus popular interpretations in Macenta in Guinea

This resource describes the use of participative observation, informal conversations and in-depth interviews to identify rumours surrounding Ebola, their sources, and to understand the local population’s perception and knowledge about the history and origin of the Ebola outbreak in Guinea. 

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Popular concerns about medical research projects in sub-Saharan Africa – a critical voice in debates about medical research ethics

This resource aims to move beyond the dismissal of stories about blood-stealing and trade in body parts as ‘mere’ rumour, based on erroneous belief or traditional superstition, and to instead appreciate them as modern commentaries on social relations that involve, and extend far beyond, scientific medical research.

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Emerging disease or emerging diagnosis?: Lassa fever and Ebola in Sierra Leone

This article looks beyond Ebola in 2014 to the history of efforts to control VHFs in the Mano River and challenges the idea that there was a vacuum of knowledge. Highlighted instead are politics of knowledge which have run through global health and which have prioritized particular forms of knowledge and ways of dealing with disease. Ethnographic research on the emergence of Lassa and the subsequent emergence of Ebola in West Africa is presented, focusing on the development of technologies and institutions to detect and manage both viruses.

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Epidemics: Science, governance, and social justice

This book focuses on how different policy-makers, scientists, and local populations construct alternative narratives-accounts of the causes and appropriate responses to outbreaks- about epidemics at the global, national and local level. The contrast between emergency-oriented, top-down responses to what are perceived as potentially global outbreaks and longer-term approaches to diseases, such as AIDS, which may now be considered endemic, is highlighted.

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Speaking with vampires: Rumor and history in colonial Africa

This book presents and interprets vampire stories from East and Central Africa as a way of understanding the world as the storytellers did. Using gossip and rumour as historical sources in their own right, it assesses the place of such evidence, oral and written, in historical reconstruction.

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