Critical medical anthropological theory is the outcome of the realization that anthropology and epidemiology have similar interest. It focuses on the improvements of human behavior, health, and research that can help the human life cycle. From an anthropological perspective, it can focus on behavioral aspects, such as why people accept certain cultural ideologies and cultural social norms. From an epidemiological perspective, it focuses on how certain behaviors and cultural norms can lead to health problems or how certain behaviors lead to health improvements. This theory can solve health inequality issues among race, socioeconomic status, culture norms, and social power or it can prove that one culture can benefit from doing things differently than another culture. These perspectives go hand in hand as they can both compare how day to day actions impact your health or how living in certain conditions can positively or negatively impact your health. This perspective is ultimately the most impactful because it examines health at a more visual stand. Critical medical anthropological theory is the best choice of theory to examine my medical problem in the country I chose because maternal death is not coincidental for the most part. It can occur from inequalities based on socioeconomic status, from not being able to seek proper medical care during pregnancy, and inconsistent treatment based on race (Kwast, Liff. 1998).
This theory is best for maternal death because it will be able to examine the differences in socioeconomic status, which will help us to understand why there are such discrepancies between people who live in rural areas, which is 80% of the population, compared to the 20% of the population who live in or near the Addis Ababa region. The 80% of the population who live in the rural areas are people who do not make a decent amount of money. Because of this, they are being treated unequally or as if they do not matter in comparison to the people who hold a higher status than those who live in better areas. This discrepancy is one of the main reasons why the numbers of maternal death in mothers occur so frequently in that population of expectant mothers in the rural region of Ethiopia.
This theory also helps evaluate why there are scarce medical centers and physicians who are able to provide medical attention to the expectant mothers who live in the rural areas in comparison to the abundance of health care and physicians who are easily accessible for the people who live in the Addis Ababa region (Boulton, Carlson, Wagner, Porth, Gebremeskel. 2019). The people who live near or surrounding the Addis Ababa region account for the majority of the wealth in Ethiopia and they are benefitting from the accumulation of this wealth by hoarding all of the available health care. Rather than hoarding the available physicians, there should be able to be a way to share these resources in order to help with the high numbers of maternal death in these rural regions.
This theory will also help point out the inconsistency of care based on race. In Ethiopia, Black women are more likely to die during childbirth in comparison to White women. This data is consistent not just in Ethiopia, but in most places around the world. It is important to conduct research on this statistic and to help every woman have the most positive birthing experience.
- BARBARA E KWAST, JONATHAN M LIFF, Factors Associated with Maternal Mortality in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 17, Issue 1, March 1988, Pages 115–121, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/17.1.115
- Boulton ML, Carlson BF, Wagner AL, Porth JM, Gebremeskel B, et al. (2019) Vaccination timeliness among newborns and infants in Ethiopia. PLOS ONE 14(2): e0212408. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212408
- Inhorn, Maria. Medical Anthropology and Epidemiology: Divergences or Convergences? Social Science Medical Journal Vol. 4 No.3 1995. pp. 285-290.