134th KUASS: KYOTO UNIVERSITY AFRICAN STUDIES SEMINAR

Blind Spots in Global Health: Lassa Fever, Zoonotic Disease and the Politics of Neglect in Global Health

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Event Info

Presenter
  • Prof. Hannah Brown
Date & Venue
  • September 30. 2025（火）
  • 14:30~16:00
  • Small-sized conference room 1, 3F Inamori Foundation Memorial Fall, Kyoto University
Language
  • English
Contact
  • Center for African Area Studies, Kyoto University

    Tel：075-753-7803
  • caasas@jambo.africa.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Summary

For the last 50 years, generations of African, North American and European scientists and health workers have tried to fight Lassa fever, a rodent borne disease that is endemic in parts of west Africa. Research and responses to the disease have received substantial investment. Yet the disease remains “neglected”; people who live in the region continue to be at risk from Lassa fever and unlikely to receive good care and treatment in the event of infection. This talk draws on long-term ethnographic engagement and a collaborative book project that is close to completion. In the book, Annie Wilkinson, Almudena Marí Sáez and I argue that, counterintuitively, scientific investments into Lassa Fever have helped to produce the very neglect that they aim to alleviate. Following the zoonotic, health systems and laboratory geographies of Lassa in Sierra Leone, we show how similar kinds of blind spots animate these sites of global health science, and how the expertise of those most familiar with the disease and the rodents that spread it – health workers and people in who live in the region – is systematically overlooked. The parallels across these different sites raise questions about what is at stake when we isolate “zoonoses” as a novel or distinct area of study and what we might miss when we view it separately from other dimensions relevant to global and national public health, and point us towards new ways of understanding the politics of neglect in global health settings.

instructor

Prof. Hannah Brown

Date & Venue

September 30. 2025（火）
14:30~16:00
Small-sized conference room 1, 3F Inamori Foundation Memorial Fall, Kyoto University

Language

English

Eligibility

Everyone is welcomed to attend.

Profile

Hannah Brown is Professor of Anthropology at Durham University, with expertise spanning social and medical anthropology. Her current research​​ is funded by an ERC starting grant, AliveAFRICA: Animals, Livelihoods and Wellbeing in Africa. This project explores changing animal-based economies in Kenya and Sierra Leone, and the implications of human-animal entanglements for health and well being. This project builds on previous research on zoonotic diseases and epidemic management in West Africa, with a particular focus on Lassa fever and Ebola virus disease. It also builds on longstanding interest in issues around care, health governance, and relationships between insitituions, modes of governance and health systems bureaucracies.

Contact

Center for African Area Studies, Kyoto University

Tel：075-753-7803
caasas@jambo.africa.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Notes

There are no parking lots available. Please use public transport.