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Introduction: In West Africa, traditional funerals and burials have proven main contributors to the spread of infectious diseases, such as Ebola, plague, the Marburg virus, and others. Although the World Health Organization has provided guidelines for the safe burial process after learning of the culture of the afterlife in Ebola-affected areas, little effort has been made to integrate theoretical interventions and models for changing West Africans’ funeral behavior. This research was conducted to study 1) the background of traditional burial rituals, 2) interventions to contain Ebola outbreaks in West Africa, and 3) a strategic approach to future disease outbreak in the region. Methods: A narrative review was conducted by using four electronic databases—PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, and Scopus—using search key terms and a manual search of Google Scholar and gray literature. A date range was open to all years, up to 2017 to include a historical aspect of Africans’ funerary rituals and 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Results: West Africans believe that performing funeral rituals enables them to cement unity between the living and ancestral spirits and to receive spiritual gifts from deaths. Funeral rituals include several actions, such as washing and cleaning the body, washing one’s hands in a common bowl after touching the face of the deceased, and lying over the corpse of a prominent person. Although Ebola-affected countries created national Ebola response and communication strategies in 2014, the efforts at the government level were not sufficiently effective to contain the disease’s outbreak. Conclusion: Traditional funeral and burial practices are a part of the culture in West Africa and should be evaluated and respected. Policymakers should design a theory- and practice-based socioecological model based on social and behavioral strategies for villagers in remote areas to prevent the spread of infectious diseases via traditional burial practices. Journal of Health and Social Sciences 2020; 5,1:073-090 The Italian Journal for Interdisciplinary Health and Social Development 74 Competing interests - none declared. Copyright © 2020 Chulwoo Park Edizioni FS Publishers This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. See http:www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Cite this article as: Park C. Traditional funeral and burial rituals and Ebola outbreaks in West Africa: A narrative review of causes and strategy interventions. J Health Soc Sci. 2020;5(1):073-090 TAKE-HOME MESSAGE Understanding the importance of funerary rituals and respecting culture, religion, and spirituality in Africa should be the first step to initiate effective and coordinated humanitarian action. To prevent or control future infectious disease outbreaks in Africa, it is essential to design and implement culturally tailored health communication theory frameworks, interventions, and models. Received: 01/11/2020 Accepted: 10/01/2020 Published Online: 15/01/2020 DOI 10.19204/2020/trdt8 Journal of Health and Social Sciences 2020; 5,1:073-090 The Italian Journal for Interdisciplinary Health and Social Development 75 INTRODUCTION Every human being begins life having nothing and cannot avoid meeting death in the end, leaving everything behind. As stated by Pulilius Syrus, a Roman writer (85–43 BC), “As men, we are all equal in the presence of death” (Maxim 1) and “Nowhere can we die happier than where we have lived happily” (Maxim 1050) [1]. Around the world, one can observe many different ways to respect death through various types of funerals. In the United States, bereaved families may choose one of three options: conventional (embalmed) burial, natural (without a vault and embalming) burial, or cremation [2]. The nation’s embrace of cremation has changed dramatically, increasing from 5% in the 1970s to 50.1% in 2016 [3]. Cremation is now outpacing traditional burial [4]. The Japanese have a homogenous cremation culture; 99.9% of the deceased are cremated, the highest percentage in the world [2]. Japan’s rate is followed by those of Taiwan (93%) and Switzerland (95%) [2]. Whereas
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