RMG – “Ebola beyond Ebola” Exhibition at the General House

06 December 2016

(ANS – Rome) – An exhibition to inform and sensitize on the consequences of Ebola, now that the world fear of the epidemic is over, was held in these days at the General House of the Salesians in Rome, after it had been launched about 7 months ago in Madrid. It is the photo-exhibition “Ebola beyond Ebola” (Ébola, más allá del Ébola) prepared by Alfons Rodríguez and sponsored by the Salesian Missionary Procure of Madrid.

To those who live outside Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea Conakry – the countries of Western Africa that were most involved by the Ebola epidemic and paid a tribute of over 10.000 victims between 2014 and 2015 –Ebola is perhaps the memory of a fear, the reminiscence of a newspaper title.

But to those who live in those countries, Ebola is that invisible enemy that continues to mark their lives in a negative way. Not only because the virus could always sprout anew, and – as World Health Organization (WHO) repeatedly alerted – we have to be equipped to counter it at any moment; but because above all the epidemic has left scars that are not yet healed.

The people who survived are marked by the stigma, hardly anybody wants to take care of the orphans of Ebola and Sanitary workers and gravediggers are rejected by friends and neighbours. Many century-old habits have changed: in Sierra Leone, for instance, traditional burial rites have been forbidden, and doing sports is not allowed in the streets…

Ebola-stricken countries are weak, with many deficiencies and a very fragile equilibrium.

The exhibition thus aims at showing, through recent images of sceneries, contexts and testimonies of Ebola-struck people – called by their names – the present reality and the ongoing social consequences of Ebola.

“Ebola beyond Ebola” consists of 30 photo-panels, each providing detailed information on the image, and with a banner that presents the general sense of the exhibition and the sponsors.

Photographer Alfons Rodríguez is the author of hundreds of picture reports in diverse countries, presented his shots in tens of exhibitions, wrote several books – like “Between Gazes” and “El Tercer Jinete: un mundo hambriento” –; he is a collaborator of numerous international NGOs, a researcher of the Centre for Image and Multimedia Technology of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and a co-founder of the initiative “Gea Photowords”.

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ANS - “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana” is a on-line almost daily publication, the communication agency of the Salesian Congregation enrolled in the Press Register of the Tibunal of Rome as n 153/2007.

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