Crisis! What crisis? Global health and the 2014-15 West African Ebola crisis

This article examines why the 2014-15 West African Ebola outbreak was understood as a crisis. It begins from the basis that there was nothing ‘natural’ about it being considered a crisis; rather it was socially constructed as such. Specifically it suggests that the outbreak could be understood as a crisis because of the way in which it resonated with the global health narrative. The article examines how the elements which constitute this narrative –the effects of globalization, the emergence of new risks and the requirement for new political responses – are fundamental to how Ebola was understood as a crisis.