Review by Choice Review
Recognizing the colonial origins of international public health interventions in the continent, this timely volume reflects critically upon the historical legacies that have often influenced the practices and underlying ideologies of global health projects in Africa while simultaneously offering positive insights on contemporary strategies and future prospects. Topics range from infectious disease control programs for malaria, cholera, smallpox, hepatitis, and HIV/AIDS to efforts to address malnutrition and heroin abuse over the course of the 20th century. This volume would be appropriate for undergraduate courses in public health, medical humanities, or African studies, although African voices play a minimal role in most chapters. Perhaps this emphasis on Africans as collective objects upon which global health operates itself serves as an important, if indirect, critique of the ways that Western-derived public health initiatives have historically insinuated themselves in Africa. However, as Giles-Vernick (Pasteur Institute, Paris) and Webb (Colby College) persuasively argue, the essays within "illustrate vividly the need for a fuller integration of social science and biomedical perspectives, in order to translate global health initiatives to local needs, capacities, and constraints and to better anticipate the social consequences of these interventions." A laudable agenda broached well here. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic, professional, and general readers. M. M. Heaton Virginia Tech
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
