Perception and interpretation of traditional and biomedical health concepts in a rural African community: Nutrition among Ila-speaking peoples in Zambia.

Summary:
This project focuses on local explanations related to (mal-)nutrition, including breastfeeding and mother to child transmission (MTCT) of HIV, and interpretations of biomedical explanations in a rural African region. The project takes place in an Ila-speaking community in the Kafue Flats, a floodplain in the Southern Province of Zambia.

Main research questions are how food consumption pattern and malnutrition rates differ according to a specific combination of environmental factors and cultural identities in the Kafue Flats and how the maintenance of social hierarchies figures as an obstacle towards a more equal access to food between and within households. Complementary, health-sustaining activities within households will be outlined. As guiding principle for analysis, local knowledge (on food, nutrition and health), exogenous information and its perception as well as the interpretation of such information will be compared between indigenous Ila-agro-pastoralists, immigrated Tonga-peasants and fishing Lozi-immigrants. It will be studied how resource-management and socio-economic changes as well as changing gender-specific power-relations are perceived by the different subgroups as contributing to food scarcity, food choices and infant feeding patterns.

Sonja Merten


Dr. med. Sonja Merten
Institut für Sozial- und Präventivmedizin
der Universität Basel
Steinengraben 49
4051 Basel
Switzerland
Phone 0041 61 267 65 06
Fax 0041 61 267 61 90
E-mail sonja.merten@unibas.ch

in Zambia:
Dr. med. Sonja Merten
c/o IUCN Zambia
Margarete Chongo Mweene
Lotti House 7th floor
Cairo Rd North End, Pb W 365
Lusaka
Zambia
E-mail sonja.merten@unibas.ch