engleski

Anthropological Researches as a Support to the Planning of Public Health in Africa

The international community is faced with an unacceptable state of health in majority of world countries today, especially in Africa. To achieve adequate health care for all and upgrade the figures of public health, it is necessary to improve cooperation between different scientific disciplines. Public health is often described as a science having the population or community for its patient. This focusing on community creates basis for natural partnership between the public health and anthropology. This paper brings the results of the multidisciplinary anthropological study (carried out by the National Institute for Demographic Studies, Paris and the Institute for Anthropological Research, Zagreb) of Dogon population living in the Sangha region of Mali in the West Africa. During the field research the endemic goitre, migration and nutrition of population were investigated, and nineteen female members of household in seven Dogon villages chosen at random were interviewed on their practice of entering a marriage, number of childbirths, number of children died and survived, duration of breast-feeding and handling child sickness. The results have been analyzed by the quantitative and qualitative methods and proved to be an excellent correlation between the anthropology and public health and according to Hahn (1999) making clearly evident that anthropological theory and methods have much to offer public health in the area of translating public health knowledge into effective action.

Dogon population; West Africa; anthropological research; endemic goitre; public health

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