[afro-nets] The politics of health

[Matt Anderson <Andersonma@aol.com>]

The politics of health
----------------------

I hope it is not out of place to note that the "politics of
health" is hardly a "newly identified discipline." Indeed most
of you will undoubtedly know of many people in Latin America, in
Africa and elsewhere who died because of the "politics of
health." Those interested in a taste of the historical back-
ground might want to look at our paper:

What is Social Medicine?

by Matthew R. Anderson, Lanny Smith, and Victor W. Sidel
Monthly Review, January 2005

Available online at
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0105anderson.htm

"...Although he was not the first to point out the links between
society and health, the German physician, Rudolf Virchow, is
considered by many to be the founder of social medicine. Virchow
was one of the great pathologists of the nineteenth century,
most notably contributing to the understanding of disease at the
cellular level. He was also keenly aware of the social origins
of illness. In 1848, while working as a staff physician at the
Royal Charité Hospital in Berlin, he investigated an outbreak of
typhus in the Prussian province of Upper Silesia. Virchow iden-
tified social factors, such as poverty and the lack of education
and democracy, as key elements in the development of the epi-
demic..."


--
Matt Anderson, MD, MSc
Assistant Professor
Department of Family and Social Medicine
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Tel: +1-718-933-2400 x644
Fax: +1-718-367-8168
mailto:Andersonma@aol.com
http://www.socialmedicine.org