Event location
Seminars will take place at Seminar Room 218, FHH (Frederik Holsts hus).
Zoom link for those wishing to attend online.
Abstract
People in northern Madagascar often resort to small grocery kiosks, or what local people call épicerie, for commonly used drugs such as painkillers, antihistamines, vitamins, and various types of antibiotics before seeking doctor’s advice. Although not authorized to sell medicine, many such épiceries in both urban and rural areas sell antibiotics such as tetracycline, amoxicillin, ampicillin, metronidazole, ciprofloxacin, trimethoprim etc. Such practice of self-diagnosis and self-prescription is called magnano docteur tegna, literally meaning ‘making one’s own doctor.’ From a global public health perspective, such situation is extremely detrimental to the fight against Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) – one of the top health and development threats according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Based on ethnographic data, this article focuses on how people DIY their own primary healthcare by self-diagnosing common diseases and self-prescribing ‘épicerie medicines.’ It sheds light on the informal circulation of antibiotics for human health in northern Madagascar and the reasons why people are often not willing to seek doctor’s advice when they are sick. I argue that the reasons for people ‘making one’s own doctor’ are multifold, among which the most important is the lack of healthcare coverage and resources. As such, I conclude by arguing that there is a discrepancy between the long-term threat of AMR and the most urgent everyday need of people living in precarity in Madagascar.
BIO
Dr Mingyuan Zhang is a sociocultural anthropologist by training. She received her PhD degree from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario in November 2018. Her doctoral research focuses on how the meaning of “being Chinese” is culturally constructed in northern Madagascar, and the social implications of Chinese-led development projects in the same region. Prior to joining Helsam, she was a writing fellow at the Centre for Ethnography at the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Scarborough. She has also taught at the Department of Anthropology and the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough. At UiO, she is part of two research projects: “From Asia to Africa: Antibiotic Trajectories across the Indian Ocean,” and "Universal Health Coverage and the Public Good in Africa: An Anthropological Study." She speaks and writes Mandarin Chinese and English fluently, and has a working knowledge of French, Spanish, Norwegian, and the dialect of Malagasy spoken in northern Madagascar.