ACHINTYA KUMAR DUTTA Professor - The University of Burdwan |
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04.04.2022-28.04.2022
Understanding and Fighting a Neglected Tropical Disease: Leishmaniasis as a Health Problem in India and the WHO, 1947-2015
The aim of this project is not to construct a Euro-centric history of leishmaniasis or to give a narrative of over-generalization that hardly examines the international exchanges of ideas and obscures the efforts of a great number of scientists, administrations and civil society actors; my aim is to produce a history that properly reflects the complexity of public health challenges and innovations on the ground. Apart from studying published and unpublished official papers in the libraries and archives in the WHO HQ archives at Geneva, I will carry out interviews with some WHO health experts and officials currently involved in research on leishmaniasis control and eradication. This will help me analyse the varied dimensions of the disease control policy, as ideas were developed within international and aid agencies, and how these were transformed in action. As I shall meet some WHO colleagues to use this research to develop more socially-, culturally- and politically-informed leishmaniasis control strategies, I shall also open up wider discussions about the promotion of health equity, sustainable health financing models and community participation. This research is intended to uncover the chemotherapeutic problems in relation to drug manufacturing at a low cost at the national level and the importation of expensive drugs from abroad by financially challenged state-level health systems.