Paper short abstract:

This paper demonstrates how an Ebola affected community utilized local information resources to construct an alternative understanding of the outbreak. An ongoing follow-up community-led intervention to promote primary health has adopted some elements of the identified local communication resource.

Paper long abstract:

Reports of affected communities defying official healthcare messages during Ebola outbreaks have persisted since the first outbreak in 1976 yet minimal anthropological research is conducted to address the disconnect between grassroots and global health communication strategy. During my ethnographic fieldwork in Luwero district in Uganda, I documented how local information resources constructed an alternative understanding of Ebola that influenced the affected community to question official communication.

Using participant observation, individual interviews and focus group discussions with key informants and community members, I obtained an emic understanding of how the affected community perceived credible information. The local information resource included elders, peer networks and clan hierarchies. Informal social spaces like gardens, bars, market stalls, video halls and returning residents with news from outside the community were instrumental in fuelling the grapevine network Radio Katwe that subtly influenced community opinion. Influence of informal resources was enhanced by their embeddedness in socialization processes including spiritualized rituals. We adopted some elements of the local information resource in an ongoing intervention to promote primary healthcare in one of the villages of Luwero district.

Community members believed and identified with informal explanations even when they were biomedically inaccurate. Official edicts were resented for insensitivity to local treatment, care and burial rituals. This study underscores the role of ethnographic studies in identifying local sensibilities and facilitating localization of global health communication strategies.