Ebola: It’s not only about the disease – challenges for adapting humanitarian assistance to its context

The 2013 outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has highlighted the importance of adapting humanitarian responses to new socio-cultural contexts. The international humanitarian community was not only confronted with poor health infrastructure but also the challenge of local socio-cultural practices, which aggravated the spread of the Ebola virus. This paper discusses the Ebola crisis in Liberia from a socio-cultural perspective and highlights how the lack of information, neglect and criminalising of traditional practices, the history of civil war and the absence of trust in government limit the success of humanitarian assistance. This article provides an analysis of allows for an analysis of humanitarian assistance within the context of the increasing complexity of disasters and changing contexts.