Ebola Voices Oral Histories

A collection of 47 oral history interviews recorded in 2015 about the 2014-2016 Zaire ebolavirus outbreak in West Africa. Each interview has a transcript. The interviews focus on the outbreak in Sierra Leone, as well as in Liberia and Guinea. The interviewees include: international medical responders, clinicians; nurses, doctors, Ebola survivors, international scientific experts, ministers and officials in the Sierra Leone government, scientists and clinicians involved in the Ebola vaccine and drug trials, infectious disease experts, members of the World Health Health Organisation (WHO), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and other agencies and NGOs as well as those working for universities. The interviewer is Mark Honigsbaum, a writer and journalist specialising in the history and science of infectious disease. Themes and topics explored in the interviews include: social mobilisation, burial practices, epidemics, public health, global health, antiviral drugs, practicalities of antiviral drug trialling, vaccine development, comparisons of this outbreak vs previous Ebola outbreaks, comparisons with the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, access to healthcare, access to PPE, suspected cases, fear in communities, the importance of working with and understanding the local community, health scepticism, funding, public health initiatives and community engagement, Ebola treatment centres, enforced quarantines, practices for controlling disease spread, need for better epidemic preparedness, how this outbreak started and developed, evacuation of international medical responders, Ebola symptoms and treatment. Mark Honigsbaum visited Sierra Leone, Washington DC, Brussels, Paris and other places to record the interviews in person, a few were conducted remotely via telephone (see description fields at series level). See content summaries at item level for each interviews for more specific content details.

The interviews have been arranged chronologically in recording date order. A PDF access copy of the transcript is in the item level record for each interview. The original Microsoft Word format transcripts are catalogued as seperate items. Access copies of some recordings have been made, where the audio was poor, these have been added as extra items.

Material given to Angela Saward in 2016, and accessioned on 14 November 2017.

Recording agreements for the collection are in the collection file. If no recording agreement for the interview is in the collection file then the interviewee has not assigned their copright in the recording to Wellcome and still holds copyright (their copyright will expire 70 years after the end of the year that they've passed away). The interviewer Mark assigned his copyright in the recordings to Wellcome (see relevant agreement in collection file). At time of cataloguing in 2025 HT made another attempt at re-contacting interviewees for recording agreements where we did not have them. If we do not have a recording agreement then the interview will be made available onsite only for now. Decision made in line with Oral History Society best practice guidance to not make oral history interviews available online without interviewee permission. If we did already have a recording agreement (which specified permission for online use) HT contacted interviewee (where we have contact details) to let them know their interview would be up online. For further info around decision making on access, see HT due diligence document in collection file. For further details of sensitivity review undertaken for each interview see HT sensitivity review spreadsheet in collection file (as well as sensitivity description fields). HT listened to all interviews in full to check for business and GDPR sensitivities. The transcripts came in in word format. HT converted them to PDF for accessibility reasons (Word Format potential obsolescence in the future) both versions needed to be catalogued and preserved in accordance with our born digital material procedures (preserving original format).; All interview summaries have been made by HT apart from the ones which say in the description that they were made by CoPilot Chat. HT reviewed these CoPilot Chat content summaries against the audio.

Mark Honigsbaum is a writer and journalist specialising in the history and science of infectious disease. In December 2013, Mark Honigsbaum received a 3-year Wellcome Trust fellowship (to start in April 2014) to conduct a research project titled 'Twentieth century disease ecologies: an intellectual history of emergence, 1920-1970'. Following the first Ebola outbreak, he was commissioned to conduct oral histories for the Wellcome Trust under the same award. Extracts of interviews from the Ebola Voices collection are used in Mark's book 'The Pandemic Century: 100 years of panic, hysteria and hubris' and the published article 'Between Securitisation and Neglect: Managing Ebola at the Borders of Global Health'.

Material previously held by Mark Honigsbaum.

See item level for copyright details for each interview.

This collection has been catalogued and is available to library members. Some items have access restrictions which are explained in the item-level catalogue records.