Marseille 2007
| Abstract #167 - Biographies of neo-traditional treatments for AIDS circulating in Benin | ||||
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Session: 8.4: Traditional and alternative approaches (Parallel) on Monday @ 11.00-12.30 in 5 Chaired by Jonathan Eflord, Marc Egrot Authors: Presenting Author: Dr Emmanuelle Simon - CRECSS/UPCAM, France |
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| Additional Authors: Dr Marc Egrot, Dr Bernard Taverne, Dr Abdoulaye Traor, | ||||
| Aim: For about twenty years, neo-traditional treatments (improved remedies, phytotherapeutic products, etc.) offered to PLWHA have appeared within the therapeutic space of AIDS in Africa. This study is part of a program financed by ANRS/Sidaction Anthropology of neo-traditional treatments for AIDS in West Africa whose objectives are: inventorying products, identifying actors and analyzing the procedures for legitimization, the process of care-provider and PLWHA confidence and the interaction with ARV adherence. | ||||
| Method / Issue: This study is part of a program financed by ANRS/Sidaction Anthropology of neo-traditional treatments for AIDS in West Africa whose objectives are: inventorying products, identifying actors and analyzing the procedures for legitimization, the process of care-provider and PLWHA confidence and the interaction with ARV adherence. Data were gathered in urban areas (Benin, Burkina Faso and Senegal) through qualitative and comprehensive ethnographic methods (interviews, observations, treatment review and advertisement, website and press review). | ||||
| Results / Comments: Using an anthropological approach for drugs, our communication will address the representations, uses and the social and cultural stakes linked to these objects. The results will be presented through biographies (galenic, history of their appearance on the market, network for diffusion) of three products circulating in Benin: Medoleme, Hangbidi and Api-Sida. Our intervention will center on the strategies for legitimization used by promoters of these products. Firstly, the mobilized local and transnational networks will be described: media relay; connection with actors in public health (national program for the promotion of traditional medicines and for HIV/AIDS prevention); connection with local NGOs and international denominational NGOs; connection with medical and pharmaceutical research in the South compared to that of the North. Secondly, the main ingredients in the discourse on product legitimization will be explained: barrowing from scientific knowledge to advance higher-quality neo-traditional treatments compared to ARVs; complete rejection of science as an imposter; resumption of criticisms against bio-medicine conveyed by non-conventional therapists; validating their practices through the existence of supposed conspiracies against them (bio-pirating or conversely, the economic will to cover up the discovery of a treatment). | ||||
| Discussion: The appearance of non-conventional drugs in the therapeutic field of AIDS is not limited to the continent. The results demonstrate that the unique case of the emergence of neo-traditional drugs for AIDS in Africa must be interpreted in terms of the local configuration for heath care supply where these products fit in: the ARVs and bio-medical treatments, imported non-conventional products (Cf. complementary foods, phytopharmaceutic products) and traditional supply (recipes) and neo-traditional non-medicinal treatments (healing churches). | ||||
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