"We are survivors and not a virus:" Content analysis of media reporting on Ebola survivors in Liberia

Abstract

BackgroundThe Ebola virus disease epidemic between 2013 and 2016 in West Africa was unprecedented. It resulted in approximately 28.000 cases and 10.000 Ebola survivors. Many survivors face social, economic and health-related predicaments and media reporting is crucially important in infectious disease outbreaks. However, there is little research on reporting of the social situation of Ebola survivors in Liberia.MethodsThe study used a mixed methods approach and analysed media reports from the Liberian Daily Observer (DOL), a daily newspaper available online in English. We were interested to know how the situation of Ebola survivors was portrayed; in what way issues such as stigma and discrimination were addressed; and which stigma reduction interventions were covered and how. We included all articles on the situation of Ebola survivors in the quantitative and in-depth qualitative analysis published between April 2014 and March 2016.ResultsThe DOL published 148 articles that portrayed the social situation of Ebola survivors between the 24 months observation period. In these articles, Ebola survivors were often defined beyond biological terms, reflecting on a broader social definition of survivorship. Survivorship was associated with challenges such as suffering from after-effects, social and economic consequences and psychological distress. Almost 50% of the articles explicitly mentioned stigmatisation in their reporting on Ebola survivors. This was contextualised in untrustworthiness towards international responses and the local health care system and inconclusive knowledge on cures and transmission routes. In the majority of DOL articles stigma reduction and engaging survivors in the response was reported as crucially important.DiscussionReporting in the DOL was educational-didactical and well-balanced in terms of disseminating available medical knowledge and reflecting the social situation of Ebola survivors. While the articles contextualised factors contributing to stigmatisation throughout the reporting, journalistic scrutiny regarding effectiveness of interventions by government and NGOs was missing.

Public Knowledge, Practices and Attitudes Towards Covid-19 in Afghanistan

“…These findings contradict the results of the study carried out by Jalloh (2017) in Sierra Leone who reported that the majority of the participants would not welcome Ebola survivors to their community and would not buy fresh vegetables from a shopkeeper who survived Ebola. However, these findings are similar with those of the research carried out by Nyakarahuka et al (2017), Rabelo et al (2016) and Mayrhuber et al (2017). The authors believe that the participants' negative attitudes towards close contact with the COVID-19 survivors come from misperception about the disease, which results from lack of knowledge.…”

Ebola virus disease-related stigma among survivors declined in Liberia over an 18-month, post-outbreak period: An observational cohort study

“…Before the 2013–2016 West Africa outbreak,[ 1 , 2 ] EVD-related stigma existed and the West Africa outbreak offered an opportunity to advance our understanding of this stigma. [ 22 , 23 ] While age, education, and referral to medical care may be used to screen for EVD survivors who may benefit from early anti-stigma interventions, qualitative study may improve our understanding of persistent stigma. In future Ebola outbreaks, the novel measurement tool described in this study will be available to assess EVD-related stigma and may be part of strategies to intervene upon this modifiable social process.…”

“…[ 8 ] Of the articles published about EVD survivors from January to March 2016 in the Liberian Daily Observer, 43% explicitly mentioned the word ‘stigma,’ which suggests the persistence of EVD-related stigma at the end of the outbreak in Liberia. [ 22 ] The experience of EVD-related stigma among survivors during the post-outbreak period is less known.…”

Reducing stigma and discrimination associated with COVID-19: early stage pandemic rapid review and practical recommendations

“…Additional evidence on stigma reduction was included in relation to COVID-19 (American Psychological Association, 2020 ; Asmundson and Taylor, 2020 ; Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020 ; Devakumar et al ., 2020 ; Earnshaw, 2020 ; IASC Inter-Agency Standing Committee, 2020 ; Lin 2020 ; Logie and Turan, 2020 ; Nature, 2020 ; World Health Organization, 2020a , 2020b ), SARS (Person et al ., 2004 ), influenza (Barrett and Brown, 2008 ; Earnshaw and Quinn, 2013 ), Ebola (Davtyan et al ., 2014 ; IASC Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support, 2015 ; Mayrhuber et al ., 2017 ), tuberculosis (Chang and Cataldo, 2014 ), leprosy (Topp et al ., 2019 ), HIV/AIDS (Mak et al ., 2017 ; Hartog et al ., 2020 ), mental illness (Thornicroft et al ., 2016 ; Janoušková et al ., 2017 ; Nyblade et al ., 2019 ) and mixed conditions (Mak et al ., 2006 , 2009 ; Fischer et al ., 2019 ; Rao et al ., 2019 ; World Health Organization, 2019 ). These additional materials represented a mixture of editorials, commentaries, opinion pieces, correspondence and narrative reports; technical guidance, or briefing papers/reports; data-based studies reporting on stigma experiences; systematic reviews (that were not selected as key evidence for this review, or that did not meet criteria for inclusion as evidence); and one scoping review.…”