Rites of Mobility and Epidemic Control: Ebola Virus Disease in the Mano
                        River Basin

Onoma, Ato Kwamena

doi:10.5334/gaj.72

Cited by 4 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…The fear and anxiety the disease caused provoked border closures, the cancellation of flights to the worst affected countries, and the denial of visas to and banning of entry for residents of these countries in some states (Onoma 2016). These measures, which stood to worsen the epidemic were part of actions that often stigmatize and isolate those badly affected by or most vulnerable to diseases.…”

Section: Ebola Ekeh's Two Publics and The Negotiation Of Contested Tiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is unsurprising that analyses of the socio-politics of the 2013–2016 EVD epidemic contained echoes of Peter Ekeh's reflections on the ‘two publics’ in Africa with their emphasis on state-society chasms (Bangura 2014; Dhillon & Kelly 2015; Onoma 2016; Yamanis et al 2016; Abdullah & Rashid 2017). In his seminal 1975 paper titled ‘Colonialism and the two publics in Africa’, Peter Ekeh outlined an important distinguishing characteristic of African societies relative to Western ones.…”

Section: Ebola Ekeh's Two Publics and The Negotiation Of Contested Tiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Epidemics and intra-communal contestations: Ekeh, ‘les Guinéens’and Ebola in West Africa

Onoma

2018

J. Mod. Afr. Stud.

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As the Ebola epidemic ravaged the Mano River Basin in 2014, there was concern in Senegal that the resident Peul community of Guinean origins will cause the spread of the disease to Senegal. These fears went unrealized as the Peul migrants embraced many of the epidemic control and prevention measures, which often distanced them from primordial publics in Guinea. While partly motivated by concern over the dangers of Ebola, Peul migrants embraced these measures also because the epidemic and measures advocated to curb it allowed them to assert greater autonomy in their often-fractious relations with primordial publics in their places of origin in Guinea. Their embrace of these measures suggests a rethink of the emphasis on intercommunal strife, intra-communal conviviality and trenchant state-society chasms, which pervades much work on the political economy of postcolonial Africa and which draws significant inspiration from the work of Peter Ekeh.

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Section: Ebola Ekeh's Two Publics and The Negotiation Of Contested Tiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ebola Ekeh's Two Publics and The Negotiation Of Contested Tiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epidemics and intra-communal contestations: Ekeh, ‘les Guinéens’and Ebola in West Africa

Onoma

2018

J. Mod. Afr. Stud.

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“…The EVD outbreak that started in December 2013 turned out to be much worse than was initially expected in the three most affected countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. It reached epidemic proportions and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a "public health emergency of international concern" in August 2014 (Onoma 2016). The epidemic resulted in over 28,000 cases and more than 11,300 deaths in the three countries.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This fear led to many preventable deaths from other diseases as many tried to stay away from health centres in a bid to avoid being infected with EVD. Fear also encouraged the stigmatisation of both the sick and the health workers who helped tackle the disease in these countries (Onoma 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Making of Dangerous Communities: The “Peul-Fouta” in Ebola-Weary Senegal

Onoma

2017

Africa Spectrum

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Epidemics of contagious diseases often motivate the social constitution of “dangerous communities.” These communities are defined as having a high potential to further spread the diseases involved to a wider public. Migrant communities' links with sick people in places of origin that are badly affected by such diseases ostensibly justify the construction of these communities as epidemic dangers to their places of residence. But this depiction of certain groups as health threats is always grounded in other long-standing narratives about the populations targeted. Such narratives often portray those targeted as radically different from the wider body politic and stigmatise them in multiple ways. The situation of the Peul of Guinean origin in Senegal at the height of the Ebola virus disease outbreak in the Mano River Basin sheds light on these processes of sociogenesis and their implications for epidemic control and prevention.

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Crosscurrents of Contagion: Snakes, Rumours, Rivers, and Ebola in Sierra Leone's Borderlands

Anderson

2023

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When the Ebola virus crossed undetected into Sierra Leone and exacerbated the 2014–15 crisis, the World Health Organization blamed the breach on a traditional healer treating patients from Guinea. Meanwhile, local residents initially maintained that her death was not Ebola‐related but a serpent's curse, an assumption grounded in lived experience of snake charmer spectacles. Both narratives drowned out evidence that the virus spread not via the healer's covert herbalism, but via her professional connections at the local government clinic and, more broadly, an overtaxed and undertrained public health system. This article takes local rumours around Ebola as vernacular epidemiologies that resonated with sensory experience. They show that both community and humanitarian actors had information; complications arose from the diverse experiences and expectations that shaped responses to that information. Such expectations emerge from the borderland geography, where colonial infrastructures continue to channel perception according to “upriver”, “downriver”, and “crossriver” phenomenologies.

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Rites of Mobility and Epidemic Control: Ebola Virus Disease in the Mano River Basin

Cited by 4 publications

References 12 publications

Epidemics and intra-communal contestations: Ekeh, ‘les Guinéens’and Ebola in West Africa

Epidemics and intra-communal contestations: Ekeh, ‘les Guinéens’and Ebola in West Africa

The Making of Dangerous Communities: The “Peul-Fouta” in Ebola-Weary Senegal

Crosscurrents of Contagion: Snakes, Rumours, Rivers, and Ebola in Sierra Leone's Borderlands

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