The Riddle of Malnutrition

“Tappan’s rich study explores how complex health issues in Africa and other regions of the global south have been falsely constructed as problems that can be easily addressed through the application of externally derived biomedical technologies. A must read for public health scholars and practitioners.”

“Largely biomedical in orientation and located in the Global North, groups such as the World Heath Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and university research centers seek to remedy the health of the Global South through technological fixes with one-size-fits-all protocols. Tappan’s research … challenges the assumptions of global health on a number of fronts and shows the cost to public health when little regard is given to local culture, history, or autonomy…. Tappan’s work makes significant interventions to the emerging field of African historical epidemiology.” — American Historical Review

“This is a thoughtful and well-researched book on a subject that has remained outside the global health bubble. It tells the important story of capacity and local initiative, as Ugandan doctors, scientists and community health workers struggled to sustain primary health care against unbelievable odds.” — Social History of Medicine

“We try not to pick favorites in the African Politics Summer Reading Spectacular, but I’ve failed this year with this week’s book…Why was it my favorite? I’ve learned a lot and enjoyed reading all of the books in this summer’s series. But Tappan’s excellent and deeply researched book reads almost like a novel: At the end of each chapter, I needed to keep going to learn what happened next.…This book could change the way you think about health interventions.” — Washington Post online

“An incisive and sensitive portrayal of the real implications of the uneven generation of knowledge in East Africa. Tappan locates the history of nutrition not only in a succession of hypotheses tested on the bodies of Ugandan children, but in later community demonstration meals and in the willingness of researchers to recognize and reflect on the unintended consequences of their actions.”

“By tracing the twists and turns in the epidemiology and treatment of severe acute malnutrition in Uganda into the present, The Riddle of Malnutrition delivers an illuminating analysis of the relationship between scientific research and efforts to provide medical care in Africa over the last century.”