Vietnamese medicine for Vietnamese people

BY Ayo Wahlberg (12 APRIL 2016)

This seminar is part of the lecture series "Global Health: Knowledge, Infrastructures, Politics", held at the EHESS in Paris from October 2015 to June 2016. 

Abstract

Over the last six decades or so, a state-led effort to modernize, industrialize and integrate traditional herbal medicine has been underway in Vietnam. At the same time, national and international health authorities have long pointed out that most general health indicators in Vietnam surpass those of other countries with a similar per capita income. In this talk, I ask what place does traditional herbal medicine have in a country which is continuing to struggle with “an unfinished agenda in infectious, vector-borne and communicable diseases” (WHO 2003) while also coming to terms with “the adverse impact on health due to changes in lifestyles, environments and working conditions in the processes of industrialization and modernization” (Communist Party of Vietnam 2005)? I suggest that, mobilizing traditional herbal medicine to address Vietnam’s double burden of disease has required not so much a colonization as a normalization of its practice, production and use. Finding a ’Vietnamese’ way to tackle health challenges has been and remains a key trope in politics of health in Vietnam.

SPEAKER

Ayo Wahlberg(University of Copenhagen)

LOCATION

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), salle 015, bât. Le France, 190-198 av de France 75013 Paris

Date and time

12 April 2015, 2-5 pm