Geographers have long been concerned with the spaces, scales, and conceptual significance of volunteering. They have, however, been slower to engage with the global surge in medical volunteering, whether in times of everyday or acute emergency. Volunteering is a crucial component of the architectures of global health and humanitarianism, but it remains marginal to the concerns of both health and development geographers. This paper seeks to address this lacuna through drawing on the case study of the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. When the outbreak was belatedly declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in 2014, volunteers flowed into Sierra Leone to aid in the response. In drawing on qualitative research with volunteers from a small, Freetown‐based NGO, we aim to close two explicit theoretical gaps. First, we draw out the geographical significance of volunteering during an outbreak of such exceptionality that the modalities, methods and architectures of global health and humanitarianism closed in on one another. Second, we explore how the act and experience of volunteering during the Ebola outbreak helped those involved apprehend what global health might mean and be. In so doing, we also reflect on the instrumental use of humanitarianism within a global health field whose professional contours are often remarkably difficult to navigate. In empirical terms, this intervention is rendered even more significant given the discipline's wider neglect of the Ebola outbreak as a crucial moment where the failures of global health were exposed and the toolkits of humanitarian intervention were pushed to their limits.

中文翻译：

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全球卫生志愿服务，埃博拉疫情和塞拉利昂的有助人道主义

地理学家长期以来一直关注志愿服务的空间，规模和概念意义。但是，无论是在日常情况还是紧急情况下，他们参与全球医疗志愿活动的速度都较慢。志愿服务是全球卫生和人道主义体系结构的重要组成部分，但对于卫生和发展地理学家的关注仍然微不足道。本文力图通过2013-2016年塞拉利昂埃博拉疫情的案例研究来解决这一空白。当疫情在2014年被宣布为国际关注的突发公共卫生事件时，志愿者涌入塞拉利昂以协助应对。在与来自弗里敦的一个小型非政府组织的志愿者进行定性研究时，我们旨在弥合两个明显的理论空白。第一，我们得出了这种例外情况爆发时志愿服务的地理意义，以致全球卫生与人道主义的方式，方法和体系结构相互封闭。其次，我们探索埃博拉疫情爆发期间的志愿服务行为和经验如何帮助相关人员理解全球健康的意义和所在。在这样做的过程中，我们还反思了在全球卫生领域中人道主义的工具性使用，其专业轮廓往往非常难以驾驭。从经验上讲，鉴于该学科对埃博拉疫情的广泛忽视是全球卫生失败暴露的关键时刻，人道主义干预工具被推到了极限，这一干预措施变得更加重要。