Public Health in Papua New Guinea: Medical Possibility and Social Constraint, 1884–1984

by Donald Denoon , With Kathleen Dugan , Leslie Marshall

• ISBN13: 9780521523028
• ISBN10: 0521523028
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-20
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book concerns the development of institutional medicine, medical practice and health care during the initial colonisation and later colonial rule of Papua New Guinea. It discusses the relationship between public health and the medical profession and colonial bureaucracy, and also analyses the profession's social and technical ideas which determined the kinds of health policies and programmes attempted. The first part describes the era of tropical medicine which predominated at the turn of the century and survived until the 1950s. The second part investigates the transformation of tropical medicine by the introduction of new drugs and the curative campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s, and thereafter discusses the emergence of a new medical strategy known as 'primary health care'. This original, comparative study will be of value not only to anthropologists and historians of tropical medicine but also to historians of colonialism and its effects on public health care.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vi
Maps of Papua New Guinea	vii
Introduction	1	(8)
I The rise and fall of tropical medicine
Pre-colonial health and disease	9	(9)
The administration of public health	18	(7)
Early colonial medical administration	25	(8)
The political economy of health in Papua between the wars	33	(10)
The political economy of health in New Guinea between the wars	43	(10)
Medical education	53	(5)
The Pacific War: the condition of the people	58	(9)
II The rise and fall of the great campaigns
Miracle drugs, new perceptions and the post-war Public Health Department	67	(10)
The health campaigns	77	(8)
Women and children last	85	(8)
Health education	93	(6)
A national health system	99	(6)
Primary health care	105	(9)
The past and the future	114	(9)
Notes	123	(17)
Bibliography	140	(12)
Index	152