Abstract:
This study had two main concerns. The first was to examine the influence of
local perceptions of illness on the implementation of colonial public health
directives. Secondly, it investigated the impact of colonial public health
campaigns on local peoples' understanding of health and illness. To achieve
its goals the study addressed Gogo perceptions of illness as an example and
colonial public health campaigns in Mpwapwa district. The study integrated
written and oral information in reconstructing the history of colonial public
health interventions in Mpwapwa district.
The study found out that colonial public health campaigns were intended
to make local people adopt the western practices of disease control and
make them part and parcel of their social habits. Evidently, however, the
introduction of colonial public health regulations was not an easy task. Local
people tried to interpret the colonial innovations before adopting them. Their
interpretation was strongly influenced by their previously held perceptions of
illness and life as a whole. As a result, some innovations were accepted and
some were neither accepted nor utilized. In the process some long-standing
traditional conceptions were transformed while others persisted. Thus, the
confrontation between local and western perceptions of illness did not result
in the complete demise of local traditional system. Although in the long
run the Gogo accepted some of the colonial principles regarding disease
control, they maintained some of their local practices till the end. The
study concludes that local perceptions of illness, taboos, social values and
other social cultural factors played a major role in determining successes or
failures in the colonial public health campaigns.
