Public Health in Jamaica, 1850-1940: Neglect, Philanthropy and Development

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Description

The use of a range of primary sources from imperial, colonial and local government records, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, memoirs and reports, this study provides the most comprehensive account thus far of public health in Jamaica in the post-emancipation colonial period to the onset of the Second World War. The account is framed by two pivotal Jamaican experiences that were vital in precipitating significant policy changes at the imperial centre. An examination of the development of the part-time colonial medical service reveals it to be underresourced and inadequate. Most Jamaicans accessed Western medical aid through the Poor Law, a distinguishing feature of the British West Indian colonies, and the issues around the intermeshing of medical and Poor Law aid is a crucial contextual question. Chapters at the epidemic and endemic diseases of smallpox and malaria expose the attitudes and the nature of the responses of government, elites and the medical services and products to such threats. The International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation used to be active in Jamaica from 1919 until 1950. A detailed analysis of their hookworm campaign, public health education programme and tuberculosis work contributes to a critical understanding of this philanthropic endeavour. The contribution of Jamaica to a new imperial development policy, as exemplified in the 1940 Colonial Development and Welfare Act, could also be assessed. A story of government and elite reluctance to finance public health services and products emerges in which Jamaicans were continuously blamed for their own in poor health health. Socio-economic causation used to be sidestepped as class and race perceptions, underpinned by the legacy of slavery, held sway.

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