Attribution of Infectious Disease Responsibility
The Liberian culture was blamed not only for causing the epidemic but for interfering with control measures. Jones (2014) criticizes this “culturalist epidemiology” (pg. 1) that overlooks the wider global forces that promote the spread of Ebola, instead exoticizing Liberian culture to attribute responsibility (Blair et al. 2017). For example, traditional burial practices and the consumption of bush meat were identified as key etiological factors to the Ebola epidemic (Leach et al. 2010). Some analysts even suggest that these cultural practices, in addition to local distrust of authorities may have obstructed interventions (Phua 2015; World Health Organization 2017c; Cordner et al. 2017). Therefore, population behaviors, such as education and safe burials and cremations, were proposed as targets for intervention (Hagan et al. 2015; Alexander et al. 2015).
However, other proposed causes of the Ebola epidemic included seasonal triggers, infection of nonhuman primates, landscape modification by humans, poverty, inadequate public health infrastructure, conflict, and population growth (Farmer 1996). Failure to focus on these and narrowly focusing on cultural practices politicizes the Ebola epidemic; yet, public health authorities, governments, and academics have largely attributed disease responsibility to local culture.