Removing a Community Curse Resulting from the Burial of a Pregnant Woman with a Fetus in Her Womb. An Anthropological Approach Conducted During the Ebola Virus Epidemic in Guinea

Abstract

This article recounts the successful application of rapid ethnographic participatory methods to the removal of a community curse provoked by the death of a pregnant woman in the ``Forestière'' region Forestière region of Southeastern Guinea, at the height of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic there. The curse-removal ritual, organized by the first author on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO), was performed in 2014, during a period of strong community opposition against international and government measures taken to control the epidemic. It illustrates the importance of rapid ethnography as a way to engage and understand a community's ``lay epidemiology'' of disease transmission, as part of epidemic control.