This breakfast seminar aims to take stock of the response to the Ebola outbreak from the time it started to pick up speed in late September 2014.
By early 2015, as the number of Ebola cases has fallen sharply, international actors are increasingly adopting a post-Ebola narrative. Experimental trials of Ebola vaccines have been attempted. Methodological challenges, however, hinder progress in Ebola vaccine development due to the decrease in Ebola cases.
Oxfam has called for a multi-million dollar Marshall Plan-type scheme to help the three West Africa countries worst affected by Ebola to recover. WHO is on the path to a reform, set to include country-specific emergency workforces trained with "military precision" and the establishment of a $100 million emergency fund. AFRICOM showcases its Ebola response as an example of humanitarian innovation.
Recognizing that we are not yet "After Ebola", this breakfast seminar will consider some of the structural aspects of the international response to the outbreak.
What are the ways the Ebola outbreak and response to it exposes longer-term trends in global health interventions, in particular the disinvestment in state health care in favor of NGOs and humanitarian interventions (Ruth Prince, UiO)
What were the variations between districts and how some districts (both in Liberia and Sierra Leone) succeeded in breaking transmissions patterns earlier and more effectively than others while the international/national response was the same (Morten Bøås, NUPI)
Has there been a ´militarization of humanitarian aid`? (Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, NCHS/PRIO)
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Ruth Prince is Associate Professor at the Department of Community Medicine, University of Oslo, and Researcher at the Institute of Health and Society and the National Centre for Migration and Health (NAKMI). Prince is a medical anthropologist with an interest in the relations between migration and the welfare state, including access to health care and welfare among undocumented migrants. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research in east Africa, most recently on global health interventions and their intersections with public health infrastructure and local moral economies of care.
Read more about Ruth Prince here.
Morten Bøås is Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI). His special field of research covers Central and West Africa, South East Asia, Conflict, Security and Development, Regions and Regionalisation, Multilateral Institutions and Development. Bøås holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Oslo. Before joining NUPI, Bøås was Head of Research at Fafo's Institute for Applied International Studies.
Read more about Morten Bøås here.
Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, NCHS and PRIO
Kristin Bergtora Sandvik is Director of the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies (NCHS) and Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Sandvik holds a Candidata Juris from the University of Oslo, and did her graduate work on Global Health at Harvard Law School. In 2014, Sandvik contributed to the debate on Ebola in the blogposts 'Ebola: A Humanitarian Crisis or a Crisis of Humanitarian Governance' and 'Fighting the War with the Ebola Drone'.
Read more about Kristin Bergtora Sandvik here.
