Le Choléra à Paris / Jeanron del. Frilley sc.US National Library of Medicine.
Ending diseases for good have been the goal of several eradication campaigns over the 20th century and are the focus of global projects such as the polio eradication initiative.
Epidemics may change economic structures, social interaction, shape practices of international intervention and attitudes towards healthcare.
This conference brings together historians of medicine and global public health, anthropologists and sociologists with policy makers to think past the conventional narrative curve of epidemics and disease in general. Proposals that address one or several of the following questions are particularly welcome:
How do states, societies and international organizations prepare for the end of a disease? Do they prepare at all?
What happens to the disease itself after the end?
What are the lasting consequences of epidemic diseases that linger on after the end?
What happens when a disease makes a comeback?
Who and when decides if a disease is over? Where and for whom do diseases end and who is excluded/forgotten?
How does the action of determining the “end” of an epidemic (e.g. ebola, polio, etc.) affect those involved: those who fear, those who prepare, those who cure, those who survive?
What happens if the end of a disease fails to arrive?
