Paper short abstract:

Both UNESCO and Sierra Leone's University of Makeni have made responses to the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic of 2013 - 2015. Thematic comparison of documents produced by both organizations allows us to understand the role of culture in organizational responses to the crisis.

Paper long abstract:

In Sierra Leone, the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic of 2013 - 2015 brought into play not only traditional actors in the field of public health (such as the World Health Organization), but also new actors such as the private University of Makeni (UNIMAK), and the United Nations' Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This paper will begin the task of understanding this aspect of the crisis through textual analysis of documents produced by UNESCO and the University of Makeni, which are considered as artefacts of a global crisis produced in very local contexts. UNIMAK which made itself a centre of counter-Ebola efforts in the city of Makeni and the surrounding Northern Province. The community gathered around UNIMAK was directly involved in the fight against the virus, while UNESCO was not, though the latter organization did make efforts to intervene in the crisis. Comparison of the themes running through documents produced by these two organizations sheds more light on the complexity of the EVD crisis, and opens a new perspective on the relationship between culture and epidemics. Cultural approaches to the EVD crisis have focussed on the role of cultural practices at the level of local communities in providing a vector for the spread of EVD. This has led to a neglect of the cultural factor in the response of local and international organizations to the epidemic, a neglect which this paper will begin to rectify.