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How fear and stigma affected the lives of African immigrants during the global Ebola epidemic—and the resilient ways in which immigrant communities responded.In December 2013, a series of Ebola infections in Meliandou, Guinea, set off a chain of events culminating in the world's largest Ebola epidemic. Concerns about the virus in the United States reached a peak when Thomas Duncan, a Liberian national visiting family in Dallas, became the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola and die of the disease on US soil. In Global Epidemics, Local Implications, Kevin J. A. Thomas highlights the complex ways in which disease outbreaks that begin in one part of the world affect the lives of immigrants in another. Drawing on information from a community survey, participant observations, government documents, and newspapers, Thomas examines how African immigrants were negatively affected by public backlash and their agency and resilience in responding to the consequences of epidemic. Ultimately, this book shows how these responses underscore the importance of immigrant resources for developing public health interventions.

From 2013 to 2015, over 11,000 people across West Africa lost their lives to the deadliest outbreak of the Ebola virus in history. Crucially, this epidemic marked the first time the virus was able to spread beyond rural areas to major cities, overturning conventional assumptions about its epidemiology.With backgrounds ranging from development to disease control, the contributors to this volume - some of them based in countries affected by the Ebola epidemic - consider the underlying factors that shaped this unprecedented outbreak. While championing the heroic efforts of local communities and aid workers in halting the spread of the disease, the contributors also reveal deep structural problems in both the countries and humanitarian agencies involved, which hampered the efforts to contain the epidemic. Alarmingly, they show that little has been learned from these events, with health provision remaining underfunded and poorly equipped to deal with future outbreaks. Such issues, they argue, reflect the wider challenges we face in tackling epidemic disease in an increasingly interconnected world.

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the science, politics, and ethics of the 2013–2015 Ebola virus disease outbreak.The 2013–2015 outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) was a public health disaster: 28,575 infections and 11,313 deaths (as of October 2015), devastating the countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone; a slow and mismanaged international response; and sensationalistic media coverage, seized upon by politicians to justify wrongheaded policy. And yet there were also promising developments that may improve future responses to infectious disease epidemics: the UN Security Council's first involvement in a public health event; a series of promising clinical treatments and vaccines for EVD; and recognition of the need for a global public health system to deal with epidemics that cross national borders. This volume offers a range of perspectives on these and other lessons learned, with essays on the science, politics, and ethics of the Ebola outbreak.The contributors discuss topics including the virology and management of EVD in both rich and poor nations; the spread of the disease (with an essay by a leader of Médecins Sans Frontières); racist perceptions of West Africa; mainstream and social media responses to Ebola; and the ethical issue of whether to run clinical trials of experimental treatments during an outbreak. ContributorsChristian L. Althaus, Daniel G. Bausch, Adia Benton, Michael J. Connor, Jr., Kim Yi Dionne, Nicholas G. Evans, Morenike Oluwatoyin Folayan, Stephen Goldstein, Bridget Haire, Patricia C. Henwood, Kelly Hills, Cyril Ibe, Marjorie Kruvand, Lisa M. Lee, Maimuna S. Majumder, Alexandra L. Phelan, Annette Rid, Cristine Russell, Lara Schwarz, Laura Seay, Michael Selgelid, Tara C. Smith, Armand Sprecher