Making Assistive Devices Essential: Prioritizing Products in Global Health

Public Deposited
Analytics

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
Request Version for Screen Reader
Last Modified
  • March 19, 2019
Creator
  • Sigounas, Vaia
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Anthropology
Abstract
  • Until recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) specified just one resource as essential for the health of the population: prescription medications. Over time, it became clear that the essential medications list excluded other, arguably equally necessary, interventions from the domain of humanitarian aid, and the WHO developed a “priority assistive products” in 2016. I argue that the WHO created this list because disability rights activists worldwide are couching access to assistive devices in terms of human rights. In this paper, I use ethnographic analysis to follow the pathway of lower extremity prosthetic devices as they are distributed throughout Uganda. This study suggests that, by glossing over the details of who gets devices and how, the WHO may not be addressing real concerns surrounding the social factors that mediate access or be attending to the plurality of ways people in the developing world obtain access to assistive devices.
Date of publication
Keyword
DOI
Resource type
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Boyd, Lydia
  • Redfield, Peter
  • Chua, Jocelyn
Degree
  • Master of Arts
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Graduation year
  • 2017
Language

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details Sigounas_unc_0153M_16810.pdf 2019-04-12 Public Download
file details PREMIS_Events_Metadata_0_f0df8cec-ad48-4d0e-ac6d-57e8b1ae9088.txt 2019-04-12 Public Download
file details original_metadata_file_f0df8cec-ad48-4d0e-ac6d-57e8b1ae9088.xml 2019-04-12 Public Download