West Africa’s Ebola Time Journey, Xenophobia and the Power of Community-Based Systems in Senegal

Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a hemorrhagic fever caused by the Ebola virus, with an average case fatality rate around 50% and a high of 90% in some African states. First discovered in 1976 in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), one of Ebola’s largest outbreaks occurred between 2013 and 2016 in West Africa, when more than 26,800 cases and 11,323 deaths were reported. The scope of West Africa’s outbreak, both in terms of cases and geography, can be attributed to the unprecedented circulation of EVD into crowded urban areas, increased mobilization across borders, and conflicts between infection protocols and prevailing cultural and traditional practices. Engaging local leaders in prevention programs and messaging, along with careful policy implementation, helped to contain the spread of the virus and put an end to the outbreak. The Ebola virus disease traveled to Senegal in 2014 when a young male from Guinea crossed the border into Casamance. Despite high mortality in many areas of West Africa, this was the only case of Ebola virus reported in Senegal and no deaths occurred across the state despite the highly contagious nature of the disease. This chapter follows the temporal diffusion of EVD across Africa in order to demonstrate how a disease as fatal and severe as Ebola can be prevented when tackled effectively with community-based systems and sound science. We investigate how Senegal’s community-based response to Ebola serves as a role model for managing the onset of highly contagious diseases in the region while also discussing the problematic stereotypes of migrants as disease carriers.