WeSurvive: Stories of the Ebola Outbreak

News broke on this past tuesday May 7th that the government of Congo declared a new outbreak of Ebola. Here is the official report from the World Health Organization. The declaration came after laboratory results confirmed two cases of the disease. It is also reported that in the past five weeks, there have been 21 suspected cases of Ebola including 17 deaths.

Ebola and other infectious disease outbreaks are not old news and it is critical that we increase our understanding of these diseases and how we can work to prevent their spread. We are proud of our work on the WeSurvive databse and we hope to contribute an insight into more thorougly understanding the experience of individuals who have been directly affected by the disease.

To date, we have nearly a hundred hours of unused footage spread out over more than 80 interviews that are a critically important and tremendously underrepresented part of the historical record of this event. The material explores issues of trust between citizens and their governments and additionally attitudes towards foreign aid workers that should be an importnat piece of strategizing affective public helath messaging. We hope that these interviews will aid in a deeper level of understanding and will improve strategies implemented by foreign systems in the future.

“LEST WE FORGET! Our children and our grandchildren need to remember what happened during the Ebola crisis. We can never forget our history. We need to learn from it and to always be in prayer and to take actions that will ensure the safety and health of our people”

WeSurvive Advisor Rev. Canon Dr. J.E. Modupe Taylor Pearce,

Pro Chancellor of Fourah Bay College,

University of Sierra Leone.