Ebola: Judging Reactions and Responses. What Happens Next?
The University of Edinburgh’s Global Academies have announced their Autumn 2014 Ebola Series in response to the current global crisis. In this short post, Dr Harriet Cornell from the Global Justice Academy reflects on how the global response to Ebola has unfolded in the press, and criticisms that have been voiced by experts in the field.
This evening’s Ebola headlines are divided between pleas for world help from Liberia’s President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and blame for the spread and devastation of the outbreak been laid squarely at the doors of the world’s supranational bodies: the World Health Organisation, and the United Nations. Then there is the intersect between the outbreak of the disease in West Africa, and the western media response, with The Guardian running a comment piece entitled ‘The problem with the west’s Ebola response is still fear of a black patient’.
On Monday 27 October 2014, the Global Justice and Global Health Academies, the Mason Institute and Harvard University Press, are delighted to welcome Professor Lawrence O. Gostin to Edinburgh for a keynote address entitled Imagining Global Health with Justice: Ebola and Impoverished People and Health Systems. Professor Gostin’s credentials as an expert voice on the current Ebola outbreak are impressive: O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown Law; Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights; and Professor of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.
Professor Gostin has been a vocal critic of the global response to the global challenge of Ebola, publishing comments in The Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association correlating humanitarian crises and what this means for international security:
- Is the United States Prepared for Ebola?
- Ebola: a crisis in global health leadership
- Ebola: towards an International Health Systems Fund
Further tickets have been released for Professor Gostin’s address, which will be followed by a panel response and a wine reception, where Professor Gostin will be signing copies of his latest book, Global Health Law (Harvard, 2014):
Monday 27 October 2014, 16.00-18.00, Playfair Library Hall, Old College, Edinburgh.