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Background report
Addressing Rural Health and Poverty Through Water Sanitation and Hygiene: Gender Perspectives
Women play a crucial role in providing care and support, and also in the use and management of the water resources and sanitation at the household level. In addition, voluntary community care work is done mostly by women, rather than…
Background report
The SARS-Associated Stigma of SARS Victims in the Post-SARS Era of Hong Kong
This article explores the disease-associated stigma attached to the SARS victims in the post-SARS era of Hong Kong. The author argues that the SARS-associated stigma did not decrease over time. Based on the ethnographic data obtained from 16 months of…
Exploring the cultural context of HIV/AIDS pandemic in a Nigerian community: Implication for culture specific prevention programmes
The new face of Human Immune Virus (HIV)/ Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has earned its recognition as a social problem due to the associated devastating social and cultural consequences on the individual and the society at large. As such,…
Neoliberal Reform and Health Dilemmas
In this article, the author traces the links among neoliberalism, regional ecological decline, and the dynamics of therapeutic processes in rural Senegal. By focusing on illness management in a small rural community, the article explores how economic reform is mediated…
Background report
Reviewing Emergencies for Swaziland – Shifting the Paradigm in a New Era
The world’s highest HIV prevalence and the increasing number of deaths due to AIDS is having unprecedented impact on Swaziland. Worryingly, with a generation of orphans and rapidly escalating poverty, this desperate situation is being accepted as ‘normal’. HIV/AIDS in…
Background report
Fuzzy Expert Systems and GIS for Cholera Health Risk Prediction in Southern Africa
Cholera (Vibrio cholerae) is endemic in southern Africa and frequently breaks out in epidemics along the eastern seaboard. Extensive resources are directed at combating cholera yet it remains a significant problem. Limited resources could better be directed to prevent outbreaks…
Briefing
Rehabilitating Health Systems in Post-Conflict Situations
Although baseline data for post-conflict situations are frequently unavailable, there is a clear deterioration in the health conditions of populations during and following conflict. Excess mortality and morbidity, displaced populations, and vulnerability to communicable diseases during and following conflict all…
Briefing
Accomodating Dissent
Providing cures for health problems isn’t enough, if people’s personal or cultural beliefs clash with the scientific approach. Policy-makers must recognize and engage with these objections.
Background report
Briefing
Preliminary Assessment of Lake Ntomba Fisheries
In May 2007, a WorldFish team traveled to the Lake Télé-Lake Ntomba Landscape in the Democratic Republic of Congo to conduct a preliminary assessment of the Lake Ntomba fishery. Primary data were collected through rapid rural assessment techniques in seven…
Research paper
Forced Displacement and Youth Employment in the Aftermath of the Congo War: From Making a Living to Making a Life
This paper explores what it means to be young, displaced and looking for a job in a war-affected town of the DRC. It considers the livelihoods of young displaced migrants in Butembo, and integrates more critical views on the life…
Research paper
The International Criminal Court and the Invention of Traditional Justice in Northern Uganda
This discusses different forms of justice, as the campaign for regionally and specific traditional justice has done nothing to promote national integration. The commitment of those who assiduously promote it for selfless reasons is worthy of a better cause.
Research paper
The Lord’s Resistance Army in Sudan: A History and Overview
The ongoing peace talks between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army/Movement (LRA/M) in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, have created renewed international interest in the conflict in northern Uganda. While the negotiations have proved extremely difficult,…
Research paper
Sudan: International dimensions to the state and its crisis
This paper locates the internationalisation of Sudanese governance in a historical context.
Research paper
Conflict, trade and the medium-term future of food security in Sudan
This article considers that the classic neoliberal prescription of peace, growth and foreign investment may deepen (and obscure) the needs and grievances of those historically left behind in a dysfunctional development process.
Modern marriage, men’s extramarital sex, and HIV risk in southeastern Nigeria
For women in Nigeria, as in many settings, simply being married can contribute to the risk of contracting HIV. This article considers men’s extramarital sexual behavior in the context of modern marriage in southeastern Nigeria. The results indicate that the…
Overlaps and Disconnects in Reproductive Health Care: Global Policies, National Programs, and the Micropolitics of Reproduction in Northern Senegal
This article explores three arenas of contemporary discourse about reproductive health and family planning. Using Senegal as a case study, it highlights the significant overlaps and disconnects among global reproductive health policy, national priorities and programs, and the biopolitics of…
Research paper
Taking chances, making choices: the tactical dimensions of “reproductive strategies” in southwestern Nigeria
Reproductive outcomes may be less a result of consciously pursued “reproductive strategies” than of other choices, and are subject to the influence not only of other individuals, but also of caprice and circumstance. Drawing on ethnographic research in southwestern Nigeria,…
Research paper
‘The Suffering is Too Great’: Urban Internally Displaced Persons in the Casamance Conflict, Senegal
The paper addresses the dearth of studies of displaced people living in urban areas of sub-Saharan Africa through a survey of a particular group of internally displaced persons (IDPs) created by Senegal’s Casamance conflict. Analysis of survey data shows how…
Background report
The Social Dynamics of Infant Immunisation in Africa: Perspectives from the Republic of Guinea
Infant immunisation is currently a focus of national and global policy attention in relation to Africa as a key means to address ill-health and contribute to the Millennium Development Goals. Yet vaccination coverage is stagnant or falling in many African…
Background report
Polio Vaccines – Difficult to Swallow The Story of a Controversy in Northern Nigeria
Global health and poverty reduction discourses have recognised immunisation as one of the most affordable and effective means of reducing child mortality and in a broader sense, as an essential contribution to poverty reduction efforts. While immunisation comes with countless…
Futures thinking
Infectious diseases: preparing for the future Africa
This Foresight Report looks looks ahead 10–25 years to assess the future threat of diseases in plants, animals and humans.
Evidence review
Is Settling Good for Pastoralists? The Effects of Pastoral Sedentarization on Children’s Nutrition, Growth, and Health among Rendille and Ariaal of Marsabit District, Northern Kenya.
The settling of formerly mobile pastoral populations is occurring rapidly throughout East Africa. Pastoral sedentarization has been encouraged by international development agencies and national governments to alleviate problems of food insecurity, health care delivery, and national integration. However, it has…
Research paper
A Hard Homecoming: Lessons Learned from the Reception Center Process in Northern Uganda: An Independent Study
This independent report has been commissioned by USAID and UNICEF to examine assumptions and evidence about the needs and experiences of children and adults who have been forced to serve under the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and have subsequently escaped,…
Research paper
The Lord’s Resistance Army in Sudan: A history and overview
This study examines the military history of the LRA in Sudan, the prospects for ending the conflict and the main challenges facing the peace talks.
Report
A Hard Homecoming: Lessons Learned from the Reception Center Process in Northern Uganda: An Independent Study
This independent report has been commissioned by USAID and UNICEF to examine assumptions and evidence about the needs and experiences of children and adults who have been forced to serve under the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and have subsequently escaped,…
Perspectives on polio and immunization in Northern Nigeria
Through the efforts of the global campaign to eradicate poliomyelitis, polio cases have declined worldwide, from 35,251 cases in 1988, to 1449 cases as of 28 October 2005. However, confirmed cases of wild polio virus continue to be reported from…
Research paper
Traditional healers in Nigeria: perception of cause, treatment and referral practices for severe malaria.
Malaria remains one of the main causes of mortality among young children in sub-Saharan Africa. In Nigeria traditional healers play an important role in health care delivery and the majority of the population depend on them for most of their…
Research paper
Violence and the body: somatic expressions of trauma and vulnerability during war
Drawing on ethnographic research conducted along the Sierra Leone-Guinea border during wartime, this article explores the contested nature of the body and bodily illness during times of spectacular political violence.
Evidence review
MMR Mobilisation: Citizens and Science in a British Vaccine Controversy
This paper examines the controversy over measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in Britain through the lenses of social movement theory and social studies of science. Since the early 1990s, networks of parents have raised, and mobilised around, concerns that…
Background report
Global Governance and the Limits of Health Security
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has exposed the limits of the current approach to the global governance of infectious diseases, which mixes public health and security interests. International efforts to strengthen ‘health security’ quickly faltered when confronted with weak…
Research paper
Traditional healers for HIV/AIDS prevention and family planning, Kiboga District, Uganda: evaluation of a program to improve practices
South Sudan has one of the worst health and maternal health situations in the world. While maternal health services at primary care level are not well developed, even where they exist, many women do not use them. Developing location specific…
Background report
Childhood vaccination and society in The Gambia: public engagement with science and delivery
This paper examines public engagement with routine vaccination delivery, and vaccine trials and related medical research, in The Gambia. Its approach is rooted in social and medical anthropology and ethnographic methods, but combines insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge,…
Background report
Where Are The Girls? Girls in Fighting Forces in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone and Mozambique: Their Lives During and After War
This study contributes to what is currently known about the experiences of girls in fighting forces as distinct from those of boys. It is meant to assist policymakers in developing policies and programs to help protect and empower girls in…
Research paper
The Politics of Rebellion and Intervention in Ituri: The Emergence of a New Political Complex?
This paper aims to place the Ituri conflict into its social setting, arguing the outbreak of violence resulted from the exploitation, by local and regional actors, of a deeply rooted local political conflict for access to land, economic opportunity and…
Research paper
Interethnic Relations in Exile: The Politics of Ethnicity among Sudanese Refugees in Uganda and Egypt
Refugees are diverse and often politically active. The case of Sudanese refugees forced into exile by civil conflict illustrates these characteristics. Sudanese belong to various ethnic groups that became highly politicized by conflict. Sudanese identities are also politicized in exile…
Discriminate biopower and everyday biopolitics: views on sickle cell testing in Dakar
Many physicians in Senegal and France, where most Senegalese sickle cell specialists are partially trained, assume that genetic testing that could imply selective abortion for people with sickle cell would run counter to the religious and cultural ethics of people…
