Crisis! What crisis? Global health and the 2014–15 West African Ebola outbreak

Colin McInnes

Third World Quarterly, 2016, vol. 37, issue 3, 380-400

Abstract: This article examines why the 2014–15 outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, which subsequently spread more widely, was understood as a crisis. It begins from the basis that there was nothing ‘natural’ about it being considered a crisis; rather it was socially constructed as such. Specifically it suggests that the outbreak could be understood as a crisis because of the way in which it resonated with the global health narrative. The article examines how the elements which constitute this narrative – the effects of globalisation, the emergence of new risks and the requirement for new political responses – are fundamental to how Ebola was understood as a crisis.

Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1113868

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