16931: Lemieux: Ascribe Newswire: Anthropologist Advises Policymakers on Haiti and Health Care (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>



Fri Oct 10 08:41:21 2003 Pacific Time

      University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Anthropologist
Advises Policymakers on Haiti and Health Care
       Milwaukee, Oct. 10 (AScribe Newswire) -- It isn't
often that a scientist with extensive field work experience
in a foreign country has the opportunity to advise a group
of heavy-hitting policy makers.

       Paul Brodwin, associate professor at the University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), got his chance in September
when he was invited by the U.S. State Department to address
the new ambassador to Haiti, his staff and officials from
throughout the U.S. government, including the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID). The group decides
how best to use U.S. aid money for health care and economic
development projects in that country.

       Brodwin, a specialist in Haitian religion and
medical anthropology, said the honor came with a large
sense of responsibility. "Because of their commitment to
grass-roots culture, anthropologists face delicate ethical
issues when talking to powerful political figures," he
said. "I had to make sure that nothing I said could be used
to harm the people who helped in my research and the
communities where I worked."

       He also had the task of explaining that many aid
programs fail because they lack cultural sensitivity,
especially in Haiti where religious beliefs are held
deeply.

       "The first thing they should ask is, 'What were the
local people doing first (before the aid was available)?'"
Brodwin said in an interview after his trip, "because
success of any program depends on incorporating that. The
point of this lecture was to underscore the importance of
integrating traditional practices."

       Haitians strategically use religion to make life
more bearable in a resource-poor and politically volatile
country, he said. They also view it as more reliable than
state, foreign or charitable organizations' programs. For
example, the network of Pentecostal churches throughout the
world affords opportunities for Haitian church deacons to
emigrate, earn a living elsewhere, and send badly needed
money back to their families in Haiti.

       Becoming a Voodou practitioner - means perhaps
earning a living as an herbalist or midwife. By joining a
Catholic parish council a person can learn how to keep a
budget, run a meeting, or pursue outside resources for the
village.

       To illustrate this, Brodwin shared his personal
experiences in Haiti with the government group.

       He related how a multi-year USAID project which
planned to build a network of dispensaries around the
countryside in the early 1980s replaced a village pharmacy
coop that had been launched by a local Catholic priest.
Within months, money coming from the Haitian government
dried up and the villagers were left with less than they
had before.

       "In this instance, an American-funded development
project subverted a well-running local institution," said
Brodwin.

       One success story he told the gathering concerned a
respected Voodou healer in a small village near Les Cayes.
The healer was enrolled in a USAID-sponsored program to
train local midwives to deal with medical complications
during pregnancy and labor, and to recognize when
hospitalization would be necessary.

       After the training, she was called upon to determine
the ailment of a woman in labor who had gone into
convulsions, correctly identifying the problem as eclampsia
in time to get her to the hospital. The training paid off,
said Brodwin, because the villagers already trusted her and
were willing to listen to her new-found knowledge.

       Brodwin's more current research centers on bioethics
and the link between morality and wellness: how people
wrestle with moral questions in health care and how
religion affects their health care choices. He also is a
co-investigator on a study of genetics and identity
politics for the National Human Genome Research Institute.
For more information on that study, log onto
www.bioethics.umn.edu/genetics_and_identity/.



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