Ebola and Post-Conflict Gender Justice: Lessons from Liberia

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the 2014/15 Ebola outbreak in the Mano River region of West Africa, and particularly on Liberia. Global public health has moved away from providing primary health care and prevention to increasing concern about securitisation and thus investment in the stopping of infectious diseases. The era of Ebola has only amplified international investments and interest in efficient surveillance of emergent infectious diseases. Informed by Weir and Mykhalovskiy (Global Public Health Vigilance: Creating a World on Alert. Routledge, 2010) who argue that Global Public Health Vigilance is a bio-politics that denies politics, I examine the history of Ebola and public health, the gender dimensions of the disease and the ways in which the actions of Liberian communities ended the outbreak. In light of some of the lessons we have learned from the Ebola outbreak, I argue that we need much more capacious understandings of capacity and expertise to create a resilient gender justice which serves women and men both in post-conflict settings and in public health emergencies. I conclude with some pessimism about whether we are learning the most profound lessons of Ebola: That communities need to be at the centre of all public health efforts.