Epidemiological Change and Chronic Disease in Sub-Saharan Africa

Social and historical perspectives

Edited by Megan Vaughan, Kafui Adjaye-Gbewonyo, and Marissa Mika

ISBN: 9781787357044

Publication: January 27, 2021

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Epidemiological Change and Chronic Disease in Sub-Saharan Africa offers new and critical perspectives on the causes and consequences of recent epidemiological changes in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly on the increasing incidence of so-called ‘non-communicable’ and chronic conditions. Historians, social anthropologists, public health experts and social epidemiologists present important insights from a number of African perspectives and locations to present an incisive critique of ‘epidemiological transition’ theory and suggest alternative understandings of the epidemiological change on the continent.

Arranged in three parts, ‘Temporalities: Beyond Transition’, ‘Numbers and Categories’ and ‘Local Biologies and Knowledge Systems’, the chapters cover a broad range of subjects and themes, including the trajectory of maternal mortality in East Africa, the African smoking epidemic, the history of sugar consumption in South Africa, causality between infectious and non-communicable diseases in Ghana and Belize, the complex relationships between adult hypertension and paediatric HIV in Botswana, and stories of cancer patients and their families as they pursue treatment and care in Kenya.

In all, the volume provides insights drawn from historical perspectives and from the African social and clinical experience to offer new perspectives on the changing epidemiology of sub-Saharan Africa that go beyond theories of ‘transition’. It will be of value to students and researchers in Global Health, Medical Anthropology and Public Health, and to readers with an interest in African Studies.

Megan Vaughan is Professor of African History and Health at UCL.

Kafui Adjaye-Gbewonyo is Senior Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Greenwich.

Marissa Mika is a historian and ethnographer.

List of figures and tables

List of contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Megan Vaughan and Kafui Adjaye-Gbewonyo

Temporalities: Beyond transition

1. The epidemiologic transition turned upside down: Britain’s mortality history as an imaginative resource for Africa

Simon Szreter

2. Contingent futures, continuous pasts: experts, activists and social and disease transitions (1950-80’s)