The goal of this study is to explore specialized and popular cultural models of trachoma, and the interaction between the trachoma elimination program and its target audience in one trachoma hyper-endemic intervention community. Eighty four million people worldwide, mainly children, are infected with active bacterial trachoma. For some, this will lead to painful and progressive corneal opacity and eventual blindness. The disease is most commonly spread by person-to-person contact or by flies, and affects very specific populations living in resource-poor areas such as rural Niger, which has one of the highest prevalence rates worldwide.
This study investigates cultural models of illness and the impact of the trachoma elimination program in one high-prevalence community in rural southern Niger. Using an ethnographic approach, which includes observation, in-depth interviews, and household surveys, data were gathered describing popular representations of the program and the disease in the research community. The main findings of this study show that the biomedical model of trachoma supported by the elimination program, amadari, has entered popular knowledge. However, this cultural model is not regularly applied to eye disease actually experienced by study households, which is seen to fit in the more general and more natural category of ciwon ido. Although the new treatments introduced for trachoma have been embraced by the intervention community, the use of the treatments has been modified to fit within popular representations of illness.
BT - Department of Anthropology CY - Tampa LA - eng N2 -The goal of this study is to explore specialized and popular cultural models of trachoma, and the interaction between the trachoma elimination program and its target audience in one trachoma hyper-endemic intervention community. Eighty four million people worldwide, mainly children, are infected with active bacterial trachoma. For some, this will lead to painful and progressive corneal opacity and eventual blindness. The disease is most commonly spread by person-to-person contact or by flies, and affects very specific populations living in resource-poor areas such as rural Niger, which has one of the highest prevalence rates worldwide.
This study investigates cultural models of illness and the impact of the trachoma elimination program in one high-prevalence community in rural southern Niger. Using an ethnographic approach, which includes observation, in-depth interviews, and household surveys, data were gathered describing popular representations of the program and the disease in the research community. The main findings of this study show that the biomedical model of trachoma supported by the elimination program, amadari, has entered popular knowledge. However, this cultural model is not regularly applied to eye disease actually experienced by study households, which is seen to fit in the more general and more natural category of ciwon ido. Although the new treatments introduced for trachoma have been embraced by the intervention community, the use of the treatments has been modified to fit within popular representations of illness.
PB - University of South Florida PP - Tampa PY - 2013 EP - 283 p. T2 - Department of Anthropology TI - The elimination of blindness: an ethnographic exploration of the fight against trachoma in Niger. UR - http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5956&context=etd ER -