A Review of Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health

Dr. Eugene T. Richardson makes the compelling case for completely rethinking how we approach the intersection between racial belittlement and international health issues. His argument is clear and fresh: public health serves as a colonial apparatus that maintains global health inequality despite the presence and ability to prevent and cure disease.¹ Inspired by the current COVID-19 crisis, he argues that humanity could experience a revolution in how we approach epidemics, both present and future. The first portion of this review will introduce who Dr. Richardson is and how his diverse background allows him to comprehensively explain the international health landscape from varying perspectives. The following section will explore the book's unique, engaging structure which largely consists of various short case studies and anecdotes pertaining to modern medical coloniality. This review will then explore which reading audience may have the most to gain from this timely book, ultimately concluding that a broad population familiar with international affairs basics may benefit from its consumption.

Author background

Although Dr. Eugene T. Richardson has the robust academic and medical background to write an in-depth technical novel, this work leans much more on his lifetime of field work particularly in Africa. Dr. Richardson has had experience fighting the Ebola outbreak, having collaborated with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea and served as the clinic lead role for Partners in Health's Ebola response in Kono district, Sierra Leone, where he is still stationed fighting the disease.² He also serves as Visiting Faculty at the University of Global Health Equity in Butaro, Rwanda. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, he joined the COVID-19 response unit at the Africa Center for Disease Control (CDC).³ Outside of his work in Africa, he serves as Assistant Professor of Global Health and Social Health at Harvard Medical School and holds the position of Chair of the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice. This plethora of humanitarian experience has cultivated within Richardson a rare combination of a pragmatic medical insight coupled with a firm commitment to learning about the daily and personal realities of the cultures of the people he treats.

Structure

Richardson organizes Epidemic Illusions in a dynamic structure that keeps the reader eagerly flipping the page, while also maintaining an intuitive layout. In lieu of chapters, the entirety of Richard's book is comprised of "Rediscriptions."⁴ Epidemic Illusions is formally split into two sections; the first is comprised of eight rediscriptions and takes up most of the book, and part two lays out Richardson's call to action and recommended next steps.

As mentioned, Richardson's goal is not merely to educate the reader, but rather to expose the reader to an entirely new way of approaching the shortcomings and failures of the global public health system. In a way, each of these rediscriptions functions as a stand-alone anecdote that contributes to entirely reframing the reader's perspective in a way that sheds new light on how global health fits within a colonial narrative. They vary from an analysis on the United Nations agencies' colonial and skewed messaging regarding the Ebola epidemic to presenting a study on how possessing privileged race and gender identities could limit the uptake of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) due to existing oppressive structures that harm minorities.⁵ Richardson also takes a bold multimedia approach to each of these rediscriptions, including graphs, charts, images, portions of computer code, sections of studies, questions and answer boxes, and much more. Somehow, Richardson maintains a professional, academic tone despite discussing topics as seemingly casual as personal anecdotes.

This final section ultimately calls for what Richardson describes as an "Epistemic Reformation," or to put in more plainly, a social consciousness sparked by the globality of the COVID-19 pandemic. It prompts each of us to recognize each local outbreak as a global outbreak to serve as subtexts to recognizing true humanity.⁶

Audience

This book suits anybody curious about rethinking the nature of global public health. Given the way COVID-19 has directly affected everybody's lives, this exploration of epidemics within the...