In this episode of the IDS Between the Lines podcast IDS Research Officer Catherine Grant from the IDS-led Pandemic Preparedness project talks to Paul Richards an anthropologist with over forty-five years' experience of living and working in West Africa and author of the book Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic. 

In the podcast and drawing on extensive first-hand experiences in Sierra Leone, Paul and Catherine discuss that the international community’s panicky response failed to take account of local expertise and common sense.

Crucially, they discuss 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.

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