African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Swaziland
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • #EndSARS
  • Specials
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Swaziland
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • #EndSARS
  • Specials
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
COVID-19Debating IdeasResponse Piece

Response Piece by Paul Richards to Alex de Waal’s: ‘Can There Be A Democratic Public Health?’

By Paul Richards
April 2, 2020
546
0
Share:
Debating Ideas is a new section run separately from the main African Arguments site. It aims to reflect the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond.

 

‘Alex de Waal’s piece is excellent. The main comment I have is that there is a reason that epidemiological models sometimes turn out to be deficient – they lack details about what numbers to attach to the intimacies of social life, for the good reason that these are not often put into words (or numbers) by those who live them. This was a key failure of Africanist anthropology during the early stages of Ebola. We had written about funerals, and funeral rituals, but this wasn’t really the danger point. Body preparation was, and we had little or no data on that topic until we asked, discreetly. A further aspect is that the adaptive behaviour needed for epidemic response is not often captured while it is happening, so officials and local responders are not singing from the same song sheet. We adjusted to this with Ebola in Sierra Leone by doing real-time ethnography (however rough-and-ready the results) and this made a difference. Responders were clearly informed that policy had to change on family care and burials. We are now at the same stage with Covid-19. Carers will have to improvise, but with advice from public health specialists about what might be dangerous or counter-productive. This (to me) is a forum for truly democratic citizen science, one where there is real respect for those who are generating new ideas on the “coal face”.’

*The original article by Alex de Waal, published in Debating Ideas, can be found here https://africanarguments.org/2020/03/19/can-there-be-a-democratic-public-health-from-hiv-aids-to-covid-19/

TagsEbolaepidemiologicalmodelsSierra Leone
Previous Article

COVID-19: The AU must adapt, not wait. ...

Next Article

Africa’s corona response rests on two things: ...

mm

Paul Richards

Paul Richards is an anthropologist with experience of living and working in West Africa over several decades. He is a professor at Njala University in Sierra Leone. He is author of Ebola: How a People's Science Helped End an Epidemic (2016).

Leave a reply Cancel reply

  • Society

    Where is the ‘African’ in African Studies?

  • Politics

    Why IGAD’ s new South Sudan peace proposal is problematic – By Brian Adeba

  • Congo-BrazzavillePolitics

    Why should anyone listen to the whitewashing of Congo-Brazzaville?

About

Debating Ideas is a new section run separately from the main African Arguments site. It aims to reflect the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond.

It will offer debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books.

Get in touch

debateideas@africanarguments.org

Follow IAI on twitter

  • 76982
    Followers

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu