Author(s):
Erin Koch
Book summary:
The Soviet health care infrastructure and its tuberculosis-control system were anchored in biomedicine, but the dire resurgence of tuberculosis at the end of the twentieth century changed how experts in post-Soviet nations--and globally--would treat the disease.
Anthropologist Erin Koch explores the intersection of the nation's extensive medical history, the effects of Soviet control, and the highly standardized yet poorly regulated treatments promoted by the World Health Organization. Although statistics and reports tell one story--a tale of success in Georgia--Koch's ethnographic approach reveals all facets of this cautionary tale of a monolithic approach to medicine.
Publication year:
2013
Publisher:
Vanderbilt University Press
Praise:
Quote:
Koch shows that the story of tuberculosis in Georgia today is one of structured uncertainties and competing logics of expertise amid the implementation of market-based health service, all of which are embedded in a vibrant culture of medicine that significantly predates the Soviet period.
Credit:
Sarah D. Phillips, author of "Women's Social Activism in the Ukraine"
Quote:
This book offers important insights about the need to identify specific sociocultural and political contours of both epidemics and management strategies, and to explore where things might be improved upon in this context. In post-Soviet Georgia, we are witness to the successes and failures of tuberculosis treatment protocols as the political and economic demands of a globalized laboratory meet up awkwardly with local clinical conditions and patient populations in ways that make standardized protocols ultimately fail.
Credit:
Vincanne Adams, University of California, San Francisco, author of "Doctors for Democracy"
A&S department affiliation:
Book URL:
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Market-Tuberculosis-Epidemics-Post-Soviet/dp/0826518931/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544546330&sr=1-1&keywords=free+market+tuberculosis