Researcher at University of Cambridge Targets Medical Anthropology Theory (Invoking Senghor : Universal Healthcare Coverage and the Place of Culture in Senegal): Science – Medical Anthropology Theory

2024 MAY 20 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Fresh data on medical anthropology theory are presented in a new report. According to news reporting out of the University of Cambridge by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Senegal introduced Couverture Maladie Universelle (CMU), its version of universal health coverage (UHC), in 2013, basing it on the establishment of mutual health insurance.”

The news journalists obtained a quote from the research from University of Cambridge: “Mutual health organisations (mutuelles de sante) manage the pooling of funds, including member enrolment fees and government subsidies; in an effort to extend the reach of UHC, the Senegalese cultural sector created a mutuelle of its own. As part of ethnographic fieldwork focused on CMU, I attended a ceremony at the Grand Theatre National de Dakar on the occasion of this mutuelle receiving a large cheque from the government. In this Field Note I examine the centring of Senegalese culture during this event to reflect on the national project of development itself. The event’s celebration of the arts sector coupled with its emphasis on mutualism and solidarity invoked Senegal’s post-colonial developmentalist visions and aspirations that were motivated by negritude and African socialism under its first president, Leopold Sedar Senghor.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Engaging with renewed calls for African values and morality to be put at the centre of development, I argue that ambitious endeavours like CMU present such an attempt and help buoy it, but that, in the context of continued healthcare underfunding, one-off gifts like that presented during the ceremony are unsustainable.”

For more information on this research see: Invoking Senghor : Universal Healthcare Coverage and the Place of Culture in Senegal. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 2024,11(2):1-8. The publisher for Medicine Anthropology Theory is University of Edinburgh Library.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.11.2.8028.

Our news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Anna Wood, University of Cambridge.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)