“It Wears an Ebola Coat but It’s Not Ebola; Its Intention Is to Kill, It’s Just Ebola Tunic”: Lay and Expert Discourses on rVSV-Zebov Ebola Vaccine in Guinea and Burkina Faso

• In Event: Global Vaccine Logics: New Trends in an Old Assemblage

Abstract

The Ebola virus disease epidemic in West Africa (2014-16) openned a space for the clinical experimentation of various drugs and vaccines both during and after the outbreaks. Vulnerable populations targeted for recruitment experienced the double uncertainty of experimental medical interventions and their own future life. The clinical trials of the experimental Ebola vaccine rVSV-ZEBOV engage with various intervention apparatus belonging to different points in time and strategies of disease eradication that underline the power of regeneration of public and global health innovations. In this paper I will discuss and compare the ambivalent discourses and tensions raised by Ebola vaccine experimentation among lay Guineans during the epidemic and by clinicians legitimizing Ebola vaccine experimentation in people living with HIV in Burkina Faso after the epidemic.
Data collection occurred over a period of 10 months, from April 2017 until may 2019 and consisted in variety of activities from multiple observations of meetings, medical consultations and the process of Ebola vaccine clinical trial, 4 focus group discussions and 33 interviews and informal discussions.
One of main finding of this study show that while militarization of Guinean ring vaccine trial allows social representations of vaccine as a tick, the perfect mediator to inoculate Ebola disease into African bodies and a way to eradicate the race, burkinabe physicians emphasized the vaccine as a chimera. Both representations converge to sociotechnical myths and narratives on vaccine as perversion and utopia of global health.

Author

• Oumy Thiongane, University of Dalhousie