Life After Epidemics : Ebola Survivors and the Social Dimensions of Recovery

Examining the long-term social consequences of epidemic survival in post-Ebola West Africa. What happens to survivors when an epidemic ends and the headlines fade?In Life After Epidemics, Kevin J. A. Thomas confronts this pressing question through the voices of those who lived through the world's deadliest Ebola outbreak.Based on interviews with 250 survivors in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the book reveals how, years after their recovery, many continue to endure long-term health issues, economic hardship, and social exclusion, conditions which are often exacerbated by their preexisting marginalization.The 2014-2016 West African Ebola epidemic left more than 17,000 survivors.Yet even as governments and international agencies celebrated medical successes and invested in disease surveillance and vaccine development, they offered minimal attention to the social realities unfolding in the epidemic's aftermath.This book documents how the lack of sustained social response through support for li