The growth of social precarity - particularly in the Global South - has meant that those living in informal settlements typically face a wide range of threats on a day-to-day basis due to the lack of basic welfare, social services and infrastructure, normally provided by the state. In the relative absence of formal infrastructures, people informally forge their own connections, capacities and opportunities so that they are able to access the social support they requirewhen needed. Recognizing this trend, this paper argues that there is a greater need for epidemic program planners to recognize and leverage the potential social infrastructure of informal communities and self-governance mechanisms during a disease epidemic. This need highlights the importance of tapping into already existing networks of social capital that can be readily mobilized during an epidemic to achieve a more rapid response. The empirical basis of our arguments draws primarily on qualitative research in informal settlements of Freetown, Sierra Leone and Monrovia, Liberia, following the 2014–16 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreaks. Our research reveals that distrust in government and inadequacies in the official response were identified as primary factors accounting for the severity of the EVD outbreaks in informal settlements. Overall, the research stresses the importance of adopting community-based approaches to infectious disease response that explicitly builds on context-specific knowledge pertaining to locally-based informal social arrangements, governance mechanisms and the local political history in which the informal settlement is embedded.

社会不稳定的加剧——尤其是在全球南方——意味着生活在非正式住区的人们通常每天都面临着广泛的威胁，因为他们缺乏通常提供的基本福利、社会服务和基础设施。由国家。在相对缺乏正式基础设施的情况下，人们非正式地建立自己的联系、能力和机会，以便他们能够在需要时获得所需的社会支持。认识到这一趋势，本文认为流行病计划规划者更需要在疾病流行期间识别和利用非正式社区的潜在社会基础设施和自治机制。这种需求凸显了利用现有的社会资本网络的重要性，这些网络在流行病期间可以很容易地动员起来，以实现更快速的反应。我们论点的实证基础主要是在 2014-16 年埃博拉病毒病 (EVD) 爆发后，对塞拉利昂弗里敦和利比里亚蒙罗维亚非正式住区进行的定性研究。我们的研究表明，对政府的不信任和官方应对措施的不足被确定为非正规住区埃博拉病毒病爆发严重性的主要因素。总体而言，该研究强调了采用基于社区的方法来应对传染病的重要性，这种方法明确建立在与当地非正式社会安排有关的特定背景知识的基础上，