Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Development interventions on public health issues have increasingly
recognized the need to adopt a 'cultural lens' and seek to understand
sociocultural representations of health and illness within particular
communities, negotiate with social hierarchies, and draw on local forms
of communication and expression to engage people. Such approaches
seek to engage with the 'webs of significance' that people create; that is,
development practitioners analyse the ways people interact with and
understand illness through cultural values, relationships, behaviour,
and social and political structures (Vincent, 2005; Gould, 2007). Recent
initiatives to tackle HIV have sought, for example, to promote greater
dialogue and collaboration between healthcare professionals and tradi-
tional healers, whose services have been in high demand in many
affected communities in Sub-Saharan Africa (Liddell et al., 2005;
Wreford, 2008). Such HIV interventions have drawn on the knowledge
of traditional healers and used local communication methods, such as
rites, dances, dramas and chants, in order to raise awareness about
HIV, confront stigma, increase access to treatment, and support fami-
lies and community members in caring for people living with HIV
(Somma and Bodiang, 2004).
188
key
points
•
Despite the centrality of health in global development goals, pro-
cesses of globalization and the macroeconomic policy environment
often restrict access to healthcare for the poorest people, particularly
women and children living in remote rural locations.
•
Poverty and disability are mutually reinforcing concepts, which con-
tribute to vulnerability and exclusion.
•
Medical and charitable models of disability constructed disabled
people as passive and dependent on the charity of others, rather
than recognizing their human rights and the structural inequalities
that prevent their full participation in society.
•
Social models of disability and human rights approaches emphasize
the need to empower disabled people, reduce barriers to participa-
tion, and ensure disabled people are represented in development
processes at the local, national and international levels.
•
Understandings of disability, health and illness are historically and
geographically contingent, varying according to the economic,
geo-political, sociocultural and spatial context.
