STUCK IN RUINS, OR UP AND COMING? THE SHIFTING GEOGRAPHY OF URBAN PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH IN KISUMU, KENYA

Africa : Journal of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures
P Wenzel Geissler

Abstract

Since the Second World War, the Kenyan city of Kisumu has been an important site of medical research and public health interventions - on malaria and other vector-borne diseases, and lately on HIV and related infections. This article compares the work and lives of two generations of local workers in public health research, each central to science in the city at their time: staff of the Ministry of Health's Division of Vector Borne Disease (DVBD) in the decades after independence, and temporary employees of the Kenyan Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) in its collaboration with the US government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the early twenty-first century. Against the backdrop of changes to the city, which stagnated during the 1970s and 1980s, became an epicentre of the East African AIDS epidemic, and underwent an economic boom of sorts from the late 1990s - at least partly driven by HIV research and intervention programmes - the article examines the spaces and movements of health research workers, and their experience of the city in time. The now elderly DVBD workers' accounts are pervaded by memories of anticipated progress and the convergence of life and work in the civic wholes of nation and city; by ...Continue Reading

References

Mar 1, 1997·The British Journal of Dermatology·A Y Finlay
Dec 6, 2003·The American Journal of Medicine·Mark Crowther
Apr 5, 2008·Social Science & Medicine·Lucy Gilson, Di McIntyre
Jan 31, 2013·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·Ruth Prince
Mar 26, 2013·Developing World Bioethics·Philister Adhiambo MadiegaPaul Wenzel Geissler

❮ Previous
Next ❯

Software Mentioned

DVBD
Migosi

Related Concepts

Related Feeds

Antimalarial Agents (ASM)

Antimalarial agents, also known as antimalarials, are designed to prevent or cure malaria. Discover the latest research on antimalarial agents here.

Antimalarial Agents

Antimalarial agents, also known as antimalarials, are designed to prevent or cure malaria. Discover the latest research on antimalarial agents here.