How Fear and Mistrust in West Africa Makes Ebola Spread Faster
Understanding local beliefs and customs is an essential part of any disaster relief effort, and anthropologists have been dispatched to West Africa to study the interplay between the disease and human culture in the Ebola epidemic.
Vox spoke to Almudena Mari Saez, an anthropologist who has been working in Guinea, following hunters to figure out how the virus works its way into humans from animals. She arrived in Gueckedou — a remote, rain forest region on the border with Sierra Leone and Liberia, where the outbreak started — three weeks after an international epidemic was declared in March.
More: How Fear and Mistrust in West Africa Makes Ebola Spread Faster - Vox