Learning from the past: the future of malaria in Africa

This repository item contains a single issue of Issues in Brief, a series of policy briefs that began publishing in 2008 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. This paper is part of the Africa 2060 Project, a Pardee Center program of research, publications and symposia exploring African futures in various aspects related to development on continental and regional scales. The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the author and should not be assumed to represent the views of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future or of Boston University.In April 2009, Boston University’s African Studies Center was the lead sponsor of a two-day event titled ‘Africa 2060 A.D.: What We Don’t Know About Malaria, and When Didn’t We Know It.” Based on the discussion that took place among the experts gathered over the two days, this paper explores the theme posited in the event’s title. In particular, the paper is framed by conversations that centered on the benefits of “failure analysis” – a rigorous study of the failures of past eradication attempts. This paper is part of the Africa 2060 Project, a Pardee Center program of research, publications and symposia exploring African futures in various aspects related to development on continental and regional scales

Medical care prices indexes

Medical care, Cost of

The EMU: forerunners and durability

The first article examines the history and theory of monetary unions to ask what factors will foster a stable European Monetary Union. It concludes that a decentralized arrangement of national central banks may undermine the EMU’s durability.European currency unit ; Monetary policy ; Banks and banking, Central

International trade and payments data: an introduction

Global trade and payments data, although absolutely essential to an understanding of the pattern and direction of world commerce, are not completely unambiguous. Compilers of such data face numerous problems of definition and measurement of particular components of nations’ aggregate external accounts.International trade ; Balance of payments

The EMU: forerunners and durability

The first article examines the history and theory of monetary unions to ask what factors will foster a stable European Monetary Union. It concludes that a decentralized arrangement of national central banks may undermine the EMU’s durability.European currency unit ; Monetary policy ; Banks and banking, Central

A Yankee recipe for a Eurofed omelet

The second article, reprinted from the Wall Street Journal/Europe, suggests a compromise between a centralized and decentralized structure for the union.European currency unit ; Banks and banking, Central

Chappati complaints and biriani cravings: the aesthetics of food and diet in colonial Zanzibari institutions

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 261INTRODUCTION A British official called the prison-cooked chappati a "nasty piece of sodden dough"; a man on trial declared to the court that he was being fed "dog's urine" inside the asylum; a member of the Zanzibari royal family got into a fight while trying to get a serving of biriani at the mental hospital; and escaping prisoners marched to the Sultan's palace in order to complain about the prison diet. What all of these things have in common is that they draw our attention to food aesthetics and illustrate the importance of food beyond calories and nutrition. All of these food complaints were made inside British run institutions, yet not one is about hunger. Instead, all center on improper preparation, presentation, or consumption of food. From 1920 through the 1960s, no other issue appears as frequently as food as a source of complaint among the wards of the British-run lunatic asylum and prison in colonial Zanzibar. Neither the poor cell conditions nor forced labor duties created the same level of dissatisfaction. The food being served in the prison and lunatic asylum was so important to wards that there were many strategies used to try to affect change. There are cases of individual hunger strikes; patients refusing to eat en masse; angry letters signed by dozens of prisoners and sent to officials; complaints made directly to visitors; letters from cultural organizations working as lobbying groups; and articles published in the vernacular and English language press. This paper examines prison and lunatic asylum diets in colonial Zanzibar not as examples of colonial-era ideas about nutrition, politics, race, or culture, but rather as actual food whose smell, taste, texture, presentation, and preparation are important. It also... [TRUNCATED

Good food, ridiculous diets, and a well fed Swahili: British approaches to food in colonial Zanzibari institutions

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 262Introduction "Food" seems simple enough. The word is short, a concrete noun, referring to something that everyone in the world can understand and recognize: food is what a person eats. But a simple definition often conceals a more complex reality. What a person eats varies widely across space and time and is governed by cultural norms and personal tastes. Just because food is a requirement for human life does not mean that what constitutes "food" is easily agreed upon. Food has important symbolic value (i.e., as a marker of identity, social status, or religion) in addition to its more tangible and obvious nutritional value (as calories and energy for the human machine). Studies of food in Africa have focused on food as nutrition or a commodity, with relatively little attention to the aesthetics of food or its broader cultural significance. Yet the literature on food includes a wide variety of approaches—ranging from structuralist anthropological interpretations, to tracing food's "social life," to recreating eating habits. The study of food can reveal much more than just what people eat.1 Food can be a revealing entry point to learn about individuals and society. The cultural and contextual aspects of food are brought into stark relief in institutions such as prisons and asylums, where menus are set, personal preferences are ignored, and food becomes the source of much disagreement. As one prison superintendent astutely noted, "any matter affecting diets in prisons is almost invariably found to be the cause, directly or indirectly, of all prison disturbances and outbreaks.

The Experiment Must Continue: Medical Research and Ethics in East Africa, 1940–2014

The Experiment Must Continue is a beautifully articulated ethnographic history of medical experimentation in East Africa from 1940 through 2014. In it, Melissa Graboyes combines her training in public health and in history to treat her subject with the dual sensitivities of a medical ethicist and a fine historian. She breathes life into the fascinating histories of research on human subjects, elucidating the hopes of the interventionists and the experiences of the putative beneficiaries. Historical case studies highlight failed attempts to eliminate tropical diseases, while modern examples delve into ongoing malaria and HIV/AIDS research. Collectively, these show how East Africans have perceived research differently than researchers do and that the active participation of subjects led to the creation of a hybrid ethical form. By writing an ethnography of the past and a history of the present, Graboyes casts medical experimentation in a new light, and makes the resounding case that we must readjust our dominant ideas of consent, participation, and exploitation. With global implications, this lively book is as relevant for scholars as it is for anyone invested in the place of medicine in society.https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/1025/thumbnail.jp