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By the end of the 1990s, molecular approaches predominated in biomedical science, but, for West African scientists, biology could not have ‘gone molecular’ at a worse time. Resource constraints led to knowledge expiry and many discovery dreams were terminated, exported or at least postponed. Pivotal transitions in methodologies, knowledge and resources temporally overlapped with an emergent imperative to address infectious disease in Africa. This prompted new initiatives from global health programmes in the North, which imported visions, disciplinary focus and equipment for new laboratory spaces. A handful of African researchers, however, have reimagined and reconstructed existing laboratories as a means to weave their own dreams. This article examines three such laboratories. It outlines how their equipment was accumulated, the ad hoc ways in which the laboratories are supplied and maintained, their extraordinary accomplishments and their key role as domestic nodes for research. The picture that emerges is one that extends beyond technological acquisition to an enactment of the scientists’ own dreams. Importantly, it is a record of outcomes from those who continued to dream while others stilled their imaginations or became canvases coloured by the dreams of other people.
Preventive interventions were almost entirely responsible for steep declines in infectious disease in Europe and North America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Antimicrobial agents, chemical entities that kill or inhibit microorganisms, were developed late in the stage of this public health revolution. In parts of the world where potable water, sanitary housing, and sewage treatment are taken for granted, antimicrobials have, at least in the eyes of the public, displaced prevention as the primary tool for infectious disease control. In developing countries with suboptimal public health systems, antimicrobials are afforded a similar status and consequently greater expectations. The advent of antimicrobial chemotherapy has undeniably improved the prognosis for the individual infected patient because, save for host immunity, it is the only recourse once infection has occurred. In sub-Saharan Africa, the region that bears the greatest infectious disease burden, antimicrobials are the most commonly used class of drugs, even though their demand far exceeds their supply.
Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915) provided a conceptual definition for chemotherapeutic agents when he postulated that the ideal treatment for infection would be a chemical that would inhibit or destroy an infecting organism, or pathogen, without deleterious effects on the host. Ehrlich's search for what he described as “magic bullets” was only partially successful and the antimicrobials developed by others before and during his time were few. The noteworthy include the discovery of the antimalarial activity of Cinchona bark from South American ethnomedicine and subsequent isolation of quinine.
'HIV/AIDS, Illness and African Well-Being' highlights the specific health problems facing Africa today, most particularly the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the book presents not only various health crises, but also the larger historical and contemporary contexts within which they must be understood and managed. Chapters offering analysis of specific illness case studies, and the effects of globalization and underdevelopment on health, provide an overarching context in which HIV/AIDS and other health-related concerns can be understood. The contributions on the HIV/AIDS pandemic grapple with the complications of national and international policies, the sociological effects of the pandemic, and policy options for the future. 'HIV/AIDS, Illness and African Well-Being' thus provides a comprehensive view of health issues currently plaguing the continent and the many different ways that scholars are interpreting the health outlook in Africa. Contributors: Obijiofor Aginam, Yacouba Banhoro, Richard Beilock, Charity Chenga, Mandi Chikombero, Kaley Creswell, Freek Cronjé, Frank N. F. Dadzie, Gabriel B. Fosu, Stephen Obeng-Manu Gyimah, Kathryn H. Jacobsen, W. Bediako Lamousé-Smith, William N. Mkanta, Gerald M. Mumma, Kalala Ngalamulume, Raphael Chijioke Njoku, Cecilia S. Obeng, Iruka N. Okeke, Akpen Philip, Baffour K. Takyi, Melissa K. Van Dyke, Sophie Wertheimer, Ellen A. S. Whitney. Toyin Falola is the Francis Nalle Higgenbothom Centennial Professor of History and Distinuished Teaching at the University of Texas at Austin. Matthew M. Heaton is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.
The etiology of human ailments is of interest to those who strive to cure them, but also to those who suffer as patients, their empathizers, or their dependents. When maladies are not inflicted through physical injury, their source as well as the rationale for victim selection is frequently obscure. Some illnesses arise from within, due to malfunction or wear and tear of aging organs. Other, often more dreaded diseases encroach upon unsuspecting, appropriately situated, and susceptible individuals. External etiologic agents may be natural and artificial chemicals, which can damage organs or induce cancers, or parasitic forms of life. Just as humans have learned to move away from the most obnoxious chemicals, human bodies have necessarily evolved strategies to keep out or destroy small, unseen but disease-causing creatures, collectively called pathogens. A greater diversity exists among these microscopic forms of life than among those organisms that can be sighted by the human eye, and pathogens are continuously and rapidly adapting to existing and new niches. The consequence is that, other than perhaps geophysical disasters, infectious diseases have killed more humans than any other cause of death throughout time. Indeed, until the late nineteenth century, infection was the most common cause of death in virtually every part of the world.
Infectious disease control is pivotal to existence, and humans have long attempted to unravel the etiology of contagious diseases by experiment and by thought. Virtually every culture has at one time embraced the hypothesis that infection arises spontaneously or has a cosmic or nonphysical origin.
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