Seminar: Understanding and Challenging the Construction of Ebola as an International Crisis

The West African Ebola epidemic was the largest on record. The numbers involved – just under 30,000 confirmed cases and over 11,000 deaths – were greater than all other known outbreaks combined. By autumn 2014, charities such as MSF, international organizations such as the WHO and World Bank, traditional and social media, and world leaders were united in describing the outbreak as a crisis.

Yet why was this, when the numbers barely registered in terms of global causes of death? This presentation will begin from the basis that there was nothing ‘natural’ about the 2014 Ebola outbreak being understood as a crisis; rather it was socially constructed as such. Specifically, it will suggest that the outbreak could be understood as a crisis because of the way in which it resonated with a narrative on global health, which had been established in the previous decade. And the worry is that, if we focus on these forms of health events, others with far greater numbers of ill and dying are ignored.