Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds
Ebola and the Ravages of History
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- USD 12.99
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- USD 12.99
Descripción editorial
“Paul Farmer brings his considerable intellect, empathy, and expertise to bear in this powerful and deeply researched account of the Ebola outbreak that struck West Africa in 2014. It is hard to imagine a more timely or important book.” —Bill and Melinda Gates
"[The] history is as powerfully conveyed as it is tragic . . . Illuminating . . . Invaluable." —Steven Johnson, The New York Times Book Review
In 2014, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea suffered the worst epidemic of Ebola in history. The brutal virus spread rapidly through a clinical desert where basic health-care facilities were few and far between. Causing severe loss of life and economic disruption, the Ebola crisis was a major tragedy of modern medicine. But why did it happen, and what can we learn from it?
Paul Farmer, the internationally renowned doctor and anthropologist, experienced the Ebola outbreak firsthand—Partners in Health, the organization he founded, was among the international responders. In Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, he offers the first substantive account of this frightening, fast-moving episode and its implications. In vibrant prose, Farmer tells the harrowing stories of Ebola victims while showing why the medical response was slow and insufficient. Rebutting misleading claims about the origins of Ebola and why it spread so rapidly, he traces West Africa’s chronic health failures back to centuries of exploitation and injustice. Under formal colonial rule, disease containment was a priority but care was not – and the region’s health care woes worsened, with devastating consequences that Farmer traces up to the present.
This thorough and hopeful narrative is a definitive work of reportage, history, and advocacy, and a crucial intervention in public-health discussions around the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Medical anthropologist Farmer (coauthor, Reimagining Global Health), cofounder of the international health-care organization Partners in Health, delivers an incisive and deeply informed account of the Ebola outbreak ("the largest in recorded history") that engulfed West Africa in 2014. Placing the epidemic within the historical context of the transatlantic slave trade, European colonial rule, and more recent "diamond-fueled" civil wars, Farmer argues that the disastrous "control-over-care paradigm" used to combat Ebola had its roots in centuries of exploitation and neglect. He rejects explanations blaming the outbreak on "exotic practices and beliefs held to be common in this part of the world," and characterizes Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, the three countries most severely afflicted, as "clinical deserts" where it was rational for people to be suspicious of authorities whose clear priority was to contain the disease rather than to provide adequate patient care (the mortality rate in some treatment centers was 50%). Farmer's detailed synthesis of the history behind the crisis enlightens, but poignant profiles of victims, survivors, and physicians, including Dr. Humarr Khan, Sierra Leone's "Ebola czar" who died from the illness, are the book's greatest strength. This fierce and finely wrought chronicle offers essential perspective on fighting epidemics.
