An eye-opening account of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the crucial role of local communities in containing the spread of the disease.

Shortlisted for the Fage and Oliver Prize 2018

From December 2013, the largest Ebola outbreak in history swept across West Africa, claiming thousands of lives in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. By the middle of 2014, the international community was gripped by hysteria. Experts grimly predicted that millions would be infected within months, and a huge international control effort was mounted to contain the virus. Yet paradoxically, by this point the disease was already going into decline in Africa itself. So why did outside observers get it so wrong?

Paul Richards draws on his extensive first-hand experience in Sierra Leone to argue that the international community's panicky response failed to take account of local expertise and common sense. Crucially, Richards shows that the humanitarian response to the disease was most effective in those areas where it supported these initiatives and that it hampered recovery when it ignored or disregarded local knowledge.

With his decades of experience in rural Sierra Leone, Richards is almost uniquely placed to write this book, which highlights the strong potential at community level for learning about and acting against a deadly disease. We would do well to implement these principles in future emergency responses of all kinds, as well as within long-term development work.