Colonial public health campaigns and local perceptions of illness: case study of the Gogo of Mpwapwa district, central Tanzania 1920-1950`s
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Date
2007
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Publisher
Unversity of Dar es Salaam
Abstract
This study had main concerns. The first was to examine the influence of local perceptions of illness on the implementation of colonial public health directives. Second, it investigated the impact of colonial public health campaigns on local people`s understanding of health and illness, as an example, and colonial public health campaigns in Mpwapwa district. The study therefore, intergrated written and oral information in reconstructing the history of colonial public health interventions in Mpwapwa district. The study found out that colonial public health campaigns were intended to make local people adopt the western practices of disease control and make them part and local people adopt the western practices of disease control and make them part and percel of their social habits. Evidently, however, the introduction of colonial public health regulations was not an easy task. Local people tried to interpret the colonial innovations before adopting them. Their interpreting was strongly influenced by their previously held perceptions of illness and life as whole. As a result, some innovations were accepted and some were neither accepted nor utilized. In the process some long-standing traditional conceptions were transformed while others persisted. Thus the confrontation between local and western perceptions of illness did not result in the complete demise of local traditional system. Although in the long run the Gogo accepted some of their local practices till the end. The study concludes that local perceptions of illness, taboos, social values and other social cultural factors played a major role in determining successes or failures in the colonial public health campaigns.
Description
Available in print form, East Africana Collection, Dr. Wilbert Chagula Library, Class mark (THS EAF RA981.A4T34H34)
Keywords
Public health, Citizen participation, Health services, Colonial policy, Tanzania, Gogo (African people), Mpwapwa, District, Central Tanzania 1920-1950s
Citation
Halli, B. (2007) Colonial public health campaigns and local perceptions of illness: case study of the Gogo of Mpwapwa district, central Tanzania 1920-1950`s, Master dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam