Date of Award
2019
Document Type
Research Paper
First Advisor
Ann Kakaliouras
Abstract
Despite best intentions, global health development initiatives have historically drawn on a universalized notion of ‘traditional notion’ as the basis for intervention. These international organizations generate a discourse of development in which the global attempts to control the local, complicating relational paradigms and experiences. A concrete example of the way in which the international institutions attempt to ‘develop’ local communities is through the implementation of training programs. Although these interventions are supported as progressive attempts to ‘bridge gaps’ between local realities and global imaginaries, they establish paradigms that ignore lived experience. Thus, this study aims to discuss the history and lived experiences of Tanzanian traditional birth attendants (TBA) as a focal point through which to understand the interactions between multiple contending paradigms. Through surveys and interviews with regional TBAs and Tanzanian biomedical professionals at the Foundation for African Medicine and Education (FAME), this study deconstructs preconceived notions of what constitutes quality care by analyzing their attitudes towards national and international policy, Western biomedicine, and Tanzanian dawa zakienyeji (traditional medicine). In juxtaposing the intentions and actions of global health institutions with the lived experience of Tanzanian TBAs, I contest that the systematic imposition of technomedicine has inflicted a series of inalterable consequences that can be felt on local, national, and international levels. By attempting to understand these consequences, postcolonial health organizations including FAME can engage in ethical progress that is framed around the perspectives of the communities involved, rather than projecting neocolonial ideologies onto indigenous populations and others. However, the relationship between WHO discourse and practical lived experience constitutes only one of the myraids of ways in which global medicine constitutes a discourse of development, and this paper cannot speak to the overwhelming fluidity of Tranzanian practice.
Recommended Citation
Henry, M. (2019). The Iatrogenic Consequences of Global Health Incentives: An examination of Tradition Birth Attendant attitudes, medical paradigms, and power struggles in rural Tanzania. Retrieved from https://poetcommons.whittier.edu/scholars/420
Comments
WSP Major: Medical Anthropology