Marginalised mothers: Health communication and maternal health in East Africa, 1920-2017

Centre for Global Health Histories Lectures

While Africa's overall death rates are now as low as Europe's, its maternal mortality ratios are almost fifty times higher. Yet in the mid-twentieth century East African institutional maternal mortality rates declined as fast as those in the Global North. This talk will consider the long history of maternal health in East Africa, examining how health communication has shaped risk assessment and health-related decision-making in both clinical and domestic settings since the 1920s.

Other lectures in this series include: 

• From Face/Off to the Face Race: An emotional history of the face transplant