Homage to Ebola Fighters

Black Labor and Humanitarian Media Campaigns

Bibliographic Data

ID2289101
AuthorsVeronica Gomez-Temesio (0000-0003-1956-4183, Global Studies Institute University of Geneva, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume36
Issue3
Pages329-349
Publication date2022-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.12710
PMID35635804
OpenAlexW4281722566
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited28

During the Ebola outbreak that hit Guinea in 2014, most of the people employed at the Wonkifong Ebola treatment unit were from Africa or Cuba. Despite the recruitment of black personnel, the unit exposes how the humanitarian infrastructure exploited Guinean workers as if their lives were less vulnerable than those of the foreign personnel. The Africanization of aid reveals a post-colonial segregation at the intersection of race, class, and locality. The article follows Guinean workers in the quarantine unit, as well as their enrolment in media campaigns. Their experience illuminates a triage at the core of Global Health according to which not only were local workers treated as expendable lives, but their stories were silenced. Yet how did Guinean workers inhabit this anti-black world? The article unfolds the journey of workers during the outbreak and three years later, exploring the strategies they used to produce their own narratives through personal archives. [humanitarian aid, humanitarian media campaigns, race, Ebola, archives

Art · Ethnology · Humanities · Political science · Sociology · Global Security and Public Health · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research