Article ID: CBB251207238

The Blessings of Medicine? Patient Characteristics and Health Outcomes in a Ugandan Mission Hospital, 1908–1970 (2020)

unapi

This article sheds new light on the impact and experience of western biomedicine in colonial Africa. We use patient registers from Western Uganda’s earliest mission hospital to explore whether and how Christian conversion and mission education affected African health behaviour. A data set of 18,600 admissions permits analysis of patients’ age, sex, residence, religion, diagnoses, duration of hospitalisation and treatment outcomes. We document Toro Hospital’s substantial geographic reach, trace evolving treatment practices and highlight significant variation in hospital-based disease incidence between the early colonial and early postcolonial periods. We observe no relationship between numeracy and health outcomes, nor religion-specific effects concerning hygiene-related infections. Christian conversion was associated with superior cure rates and shorter length of stay and with lower incidence of skin diseases and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). However, our findings indicate that STI incidence was linked to morality campaigns and that clinicians’ diagnoses were influenced by assumptions around religious groups’ sexual behaviour.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB251207238/

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Authors & Contributors
Wall, Barbra Mann
Luca Muscardin
Diana S. Wylie
Summers, Carol
Honarmand Ebrahimi, Sara
McCoy, William Kent, Jr.
Concepts
Missionaries and missions
Medicine
Medicine and religion
Christianity
Hospitals and clinics
Sexually transmitted diseases
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, late
18th century
17th century
Places
Africa
Uganda
Zambia
United States
Great Britain
Malawi
Institutions
United States. Public Health Service
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