Political drivers of epidemic response: foreign healthcare workers and the 2014 Ebola outbreak

Nohrstedt, Daniel; Bækkeskov, Erik

doi:10.1111/disa.12238

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Using a contagion model to examine Internet searches and tweets in the United States after the October 2014 in-country Ebola transmission, Towers et al (2015) show how each news report bred huge numbers of subsequent searches and tweets by U.S. citizens, indicating interest and perhaps fear. The importance of media reports and resultant public fear is pertinent not only to respondents’ assessment of how they were likely to be treated by others if they opted to engage, but also to politics and policy-making, which affected the screening and quarantine requirements that were burdensome to many volunteers (Nohrstedt & Baekkeskov, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Knew I Could Make a Difference”: Motivations and Barriers to Engagement in Fighting the West African Ebola Outbreak Among U.S.-Based Health Professionals

et al. 2018

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The 2014 West African Ebola outbreak was unprecedented in scale and required significant international assistance. Many U.S.-based health professionals traveled to West Africa to participate in the response, whereas others considered participation, but ultimately decided against it. This study explores motivators, facilitators, and barriers to international health care worker mobilization. We conducted 24 semistructured in-depth interviews and one focus group discussion with clinical and nonclinical responders and nonresponders. Responders reported feeling duty-bound to help, confidence in their training, and prior experience in humanitarian response. Media coverage was perceived to create environments of stigma and misinformation. Supportive workplaces and clear leave of absence policies facilitated engagement, whereas unsupportive workplaces posed barriers. Although nonresponders were included in the study, the dynamics of nonresponse were less clear and warrant further exploration. Understanding how to support health professionals in responding to outbreak situations may improve mobilization in future public health crises.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Knew I Could Make a Difference”: Motivations and Barriers to Engagement in Fighting the West African Ebola Outbreak Among U.S.-Based Health Professionals

et al. 2018

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“…2 These colonial legacies shaped how aid was initially offered and distributed in West Africa, as well as how research was designed and implemented. 10 Underlying historical distrust of Western involvement led in some cases to local communities hesitating or refusing to comply with directions, thereby aiding the spread of the disease. 2 Initial Ebola response strategies—including those for designing and implementing R&D—were not readily accepted by communities across the three countries and were erroneously framed as ‘resistance’ by media in HICs.…”

Section: Social and Political Context Of The West African Ebola Virus...mentioning

confidence: 99%

R&D during public health emergencies: the value(s) of trust, governance and collaboration

et al. 2022

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In January 2021, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director–general of the WHO, warned that the world was ‘on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure [that] will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries’. We are now past the brink. Many high-income countries have vaccinated their populations (which, in some cases, includes third and even fourth doses) and are loosening public health and social measures, while low-income and middle-income countries are struggling to secure enough supply of vaccines to administer first doses. While injustices abound in the deployment and allocation of COVID-19 vaccines, therapies and diagnostics, an area that has hitherto received inadequate ethical scrutiny concerns the upstream structures and mechanisms that govern and facilitate the research and development (R&D) associated with these novel therapies, vaccines and diagnostics. Much can be learnt by looking to past experiences with the rapid deployment of R&D in the context of public health emergencies. Yet, much of the ‘learning’ from past epidemics and outbreaks has largely focused on technical or technological innovations and overlooked the essential role of important normative developments; namely, the importance of fostering multiple levels of trust, strong and fair governance, and broad research collaborations. In this paper, we argue that normative lessons pertaining to the conduct of R&D during the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa provide important insights for how R&D ought to proceed to combat the current COVID-19 pandemic and future infectious disease threats.

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“…Many studies have explored the drivers of individual outbreaks and pandemics (e.g. [31,33,34]) or considered risk factors for future spillover or outbreaks of individual diseases [35][36][37]. For example, several studies have considered how spatial variation in environmental conditions such as temperature and rainfall [36], forest loss [38] and host diversity [39,40] affect overall Ebola virus spillover risk.…”

Section: (A) Exploring the Drivers Of Zoonotic Outbreaksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characteristics of the 100 largest modern zoonotic disease outbreaks

Stephens

Gottdenker

Schatz

et al. 2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Zoonotic disease outbreaks are an important threat to human health and numerous drivers have been recognized as contributing to their increasing frequency. Identifying and quantifying relationships between drivers of zoonotic disease outbreaks and outbreak severity is critical to developing targeted zoonotic disease surveillance and outbreak prevention strategies. However, quantitative studies of outbreak drivers on a global scale are lacking. Attributes of countries such as press freedom, surveillance capabilities and latitude also bias global outbreak data. To illustrate these issues, we review the characteristics of the 100 largest outbreaks in a global dataset ( n = 4463 bacterial and viral zoonotic outbreaks), and compare them with 200 randomly chosen background controls. Large outbreaks tended to have more drivers than background outbreaks and were related to large-scale environmental and demographic factors such as changes in vector abundance, human population density, unusual weather conditions and water contamination. Pathogens of large outbreaks were more likely to be viral and vector-borne than background outbreaks. Overall, our case study shows that the characteristics of large zoonotic outbreaks with thousands to millions of cases differ consistently from those of more typical outbreaks. We also discuss the limitations of our work, hoping to pave the way for more comprehensive future studies. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Infectious disease macroecology: parasite diversity and dynamics across the globe’.

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Political drivers of epidemic response: foreign healthcare workers and the 2014 Ebola outbreak

Cited by 12 publications

References 62 publications

“I Knew I Could Make a Difference”: Motivations and Barriers to Engagement in Fighting the West African Ebola Outbreak Among U.S.-Based Health Professionals

“I Knew I Could Make a Difference”: Motivations and Barriers to Engagement in Fighting the West African Ebola Outbreak Among U.S.-Based Health Professionals

R&D during public health emergencies: the value(s) of trust, governance and collaboration

Characteristics of the 100 largest modern zoonotic disease outbreaks

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