Jennifer Tappan is an associate professor of African history at Portland State University. Her research focuses on the history of medicine and health in Africa, and her work has appeared in the International Journal of African Historical Studies and the edited volume Global Health in Africa: Historical Perspectives on Disease Control.
Listed in: African Studies · History of Science · Medical | Health Policy · Global Issues · African History · Uganda
The Riddle of Malnutrition
The Long Arc of Biomedical and Public Health Interventions in Uganda
By Jennifer Tappan
More than ten million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition globally each year. In Uganda, longstanding efforts to understand, treat, and then prevent the condition initially served to medicalize it, in the eyes of both biomedical personnel and Ugandans who brought their children to the hospital for treatment and care. Medicalization meant malnutrition came to be seen as a disease—as a medical emergency—not a preventable condition, further compromising nutritional health in Uganda.Rath
