Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ethics, Experiment, Aid: China's Efforts to Eradicate Malaria in the Union of the Comoros

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation research, supported by the Science, Technology & Society program at NSF, examines China's growing role in African health and development. Through ethnographic fieldwork, the project will follow China's malaria-related aid from its scientific and policy origins in Beijing, through its implementation at sites in Africa, to an examination of how such aid is viewed by global health actors in Geneva. The multi-sited ethnography in this project is employed to advance understanding of global health practice and policy, and research on disease control and prevention initiatives. This approach permits a more in-depth look at this hybrid aid and experiment project than more traditional epidemiological methods or economic analyses of health policy outcomes. A cornerstone of China's malaria-related aid to Africa is the provision of Chinese-made artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT, a powerful anti-malarial) for use in mass drug administration (MDA) in African nations. The first instance of such Chinese aid came in the form of a controversial malaria-eradication experiment carried out in 2007-08 by Chinese researchers in the Union of the Comoros. This study will pay particular attention to the Comoros MDA as a precedent-setting hybrid of aid and experiment that has paved the way for China to propose similar MDAs in other African nations. This research comes at a pivotal moment in the trajectory of global malaria control efforts, as eradication and elimination, and how each might be achieved, are now under discussion by members of the international health communities. The World Heath Organization is in the process of drafting new guidelines on the accepted use of anti-malarial pharmaceuticals in mass administration just as China is focusing its emerging health development efforts in Africa on the control of malaria through the provision of Chinese-made ACTs. By striving to understand China's emerging role in African health and development, the research stands to provide insight for policy-makers in malaria control and health governance, as well as for scholars interested in China's role in Africa and the increasing trend towards hybridity in experiment and international aid.