Barry Hewlett, a medical anthropologist at WSU Vancouver, says that efforts to contain outbreaks such as Ebola must be “culturally sensitive and appropriate…otherwise people are running away from actual care that is intended to help them.”
Hewlett was invited to join a World Health Organization Ebola team during the 2000 outbreak in Uganda. His experiences there prove the vital role that anthropologists play in disease outbreak efforts.
In a report on his experiences in Uganda, Hewlett noted that healthcare workers in the field were having a difficult time convincing the local people to bring their sick family members to clinics and isolation wards.
Read more at the Borgen Project blog
Hewlett wrote Ebola, Culture and Politics: The Anthropology of an Emerging Disease, a compulsory reading for medical anthropologists. In an interview with the Belgian MO* Magazine, Hewlett contends that medical teams are repeating the same mistakes all over again. With the death toll passing 700, this is the deadliest Ebola outbreak up to now.
Read ‘Mistakes in fighting Ebola repeated all over again, says pioneer’ in Mondiaal Nieuws
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