What lessons can we learn from using local knowledge in countries like Sierra Leone to combat past epidemics like the Ebola outbreak and the recent Covid-19 pandemic.
When an Ebola outbreak swept across West Africa in 2013, claiming thousands of lives in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the international community was gripped by hysteria. Experts grimly predicted that millions would be infected within months. Yet by the middle of 2014, the disease was already going into decline in Africa itself. So why did outside observers get it so wrong?
In this episode of the IDS Between the Lines podcast IDS Research Officer Catherine Grant from the IDS-led Pandemic Preparedness project talks to Paul Richards an anthropologist with over forty-five years’ experience of living and working in West Africa and author of the book Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic.
Listen to the podcast
In the podcast and drawing on extensive first-hand experiences in Sierra Leone, Paul and Catherine discuss that the international community’s panicky response failed to take account of local expertise and common sense.
Crucially, they discuss that the humanitarian response to the disease was most effective in those areas where it supported these initiatives and that it hampered recovery when it ignored or disregarded local knowledge.
Using local knowledge can teach communities to cope better with future pandemics by using this knowledge along with other national and international health systems.
About the interviewer
Catherine Grant is a social scientist, her work focuses on international health, education and nutrition issues. She has an interest in zoonotic diseases and was recently part of an international interdisciplinary consortium focusing on four zoonotic diseases, each affected in different ways by ecosystem changes and having different impacts on people’s health, wellbeing and livelihoods. As part of this work she conducted fieldwork and participatory research focusing on zoonotic diseases in Africa.
About the interviewee
Paul Richards is an anthropologist with over forty-five years’ experience of living and working in West Africa. He is emeritus professor of technology and agrarian development at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and adjunct professor at Njala University in central Sierra Leone. In 2016 he published Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic. His previous books include Indigenous agricultural revolution (1985) and Coping with hunger (1986), both reissued by Routledge in 2023.
About the Between the Lines podcast
This podcast series explores ground-breaking ideas in development for positive social and environmental change. Each month we feature an interview with an expert in international development who will talk about their latest research and ideas.
Episodes content could feature authors of new books, IDS research or interviews with special guest stars.
The discussions give an insight on the themes covered, exploring the challenges and discoveries, and why the issues matter for progressive and sustainable development globally.
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