Box 2.

Local Perspectives on Local Intellectual and Scientific Involvement and Communication

Experiences of co-authors (PK, KKB, CK) in DRC show that there were serious communication deficiencies alongside a lack of space for local scientific or academic debate on Ebola outbreak responses. For example, Public Health and Medicine Faculties at universities including the Université Libre des Pays des Grands Lacs (ULPGL, in Goma, North Kivu) and Institut Supérieur des Techniques Médicales de Bukavu (ISTM-Bukavu, Eastern Congo), would have been appropriate institutions to engage to help to identify and shape critical solutions. They were not involved, although some individual faculty members did provide input and help to collect data. Local frontline health workers were not consulted (despite being expected to implement many of the response actions) and frequently felt bypassed and undermined (e.g. when they were unable to explain the reasoning behind certain response actions that local people did not like or understand). There were no scientific presentations by humanitarian agencies or the national public health program that could have enabled locally appropriate debate about the response and more informed solution-building.

Communications were frequently unclear and inadequate. Local radio programs presented preventive messages without any scientific evidence; there was huge confusion about the vaccine as it was rolled out; and the quality of debate was poor. These deficiencies could all have been improved with the participation of local researchers, health workers and institutions.