Category: Crisis Response

Picture a poster on the wall of an Ebola treatment center in Guinea, 2014. It shows the symptoms to watch for: fever, vomiting, bleeding. It lists what to do: wash hands, avoid contact, seek help. It carries a message that, in communities where touching the dead is a sacred duty,…

Seventy-two hours after the earthquake, the field hospital begins to fill. The patients aren’t just arriving with crush injuries anymore; they are arriving with the first, shivering signs of infectious disease. Rumors metastasize in five languages. The water is poisoned. The aid workers are stealing children. The vaccines cause paralysis.…