Important Dates

The Covid-19 pandemic is in its scale and global spread a new experience for globalised societies around the world. The global health interventions undertaken to respond to it have largely been authoritarian-liberal strategies that deepen existing social inequity. The novelty of the epidemic holds true only for some populations primarily in the Global North, though. Be it SARS in Asia, Zika in Latin America or Ebola in Africa, many societies around the world have long gathered experiences of dealing with deadly infectious diseases. Learning how people everywhere can best sustain their livelihoods as well as their social, economic and political webs of life while maintainig physical distance is a current as well as future challenge. Health and environmental activists worldwide have stressed the importance of respecting human rights, securing basic health care, fighting stigma and environmental exploitation for successfully dealing with Covid-19 globally.

This session focuses on the lessons learned from Ebola. Nene Morisho Mwanabiningo from the Pole Institute in Goma, Eastern DR Congo, analyses how the experience with Ebola in the North Kivu province prepared people, local authorities and medical staff for mastering the spread of Covid-19. Uli Beisel, a medical anthropologist and human geographer at the University ofBayreuth, reflects on how infectious diseases and their territorialisations redraw our understanding of human-environment relations. Anne Jung, a human rights activist from Medico International in Frankfurt who worked with grassroots health activists during the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, will focus on how community health movements can teach us fighting Covid-19 as a form of acting in solidarity.

• Vortragende: Uli Beisel (Bayreuth), Anne Jung (medico international) und Nene Morisho Mwanabiningo (Goma)
  
• Moderation: Stefan Ouma (Bayreuth)