Suchergebnisse

This paper is about a drug called misoprostol and its controversial clinical and social lives. Although originally developed as a prevention for gastric ulcers, in the 1980s, it developed an off-label reputation as an abortifacient. The drug's association with clandestine abortion has profoundly shaped its social life as a marginal and suspect character in the realm of global maternal and reproductive health where it has the potential to prevent two major causes of maternal death––postpartum hemorrhage and unsafe abortion. The social life of misoprostol has also been shaped by the question of authoritative practice, that is, the question of who can deliver medicine. Both issues are about the specters of misuse of misoprostol: off-label, illegal, immoral, or by unlicensed providers. In this paper, I focus ethnographically on two women's health nongovernmental organizations that have been conducting clinical testing and advocacy for the use of misoprostol for reproductive indications in global maternal health settings. Drawing on the notions of pharmaceutical activism and protocol feminism, I describe and analyze how the tools of evidence and authoritative practice have been reassembled in new networks of expertise toward the social justice goals of life, access, and dignity for women.

Chapter 1. Introduction Lauren J. Wallace, Margaret E. MacDonald & Katerini T. Storeng -- Part I. Implementation Disconnects and Policy Rhetoric -- Chapter 2. Baby (not so) Friendly: Implementation of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative in Serbia Ljiljana Pantović -- Chapter 3. The Promise and Neglect of Follow-up Care in Obstetric Fistula Treatment in Uganda Bonnie Ruder & Alice Emasu -- Chapter 4. The Domestication of Misoprostol for Abortion in Burkina Faso: Interactions Between Caregivers, Drug Vendors and Women Seydou Drabo -- Chapter 5. The 'Sustainability Doctrine' in Donor-Driven Maternal Health Programs in Tanzania Meredith G. Marten -- Part II. Policy Ambivalence -- Chapter 6. The Place of Traditional Birth Attendants in Global Maternal Health: Policy Retreat, Ambivalence, and Return Margaret E. MacDonald -- Chapter 7. Conflicted Reproductive Governance: The Co-existence of Rights-Based Approaches and Coercion in India's Family Planning Policies Maya Unnithan -- Part III. Contesting Authoritative Knowledge and Practice -- Chapter 8. Regulating Midwives: Foreclosing Alternatives in the Policy-making Process in West Java, Indonesia Priscilla Magrath -- Part IV. The Rise of Evidence and Its Uses -- Chapter 9. Making Space for Qualitative Evidence in Global Maternal and Child Health Policy-making Christopher J. Colvin -- Chapter 10. The International Childbirth Initiative: An Applied Anthropologist's Account of Developing Global Guidelines Robbie Davis-Floyd -- Chapter 11. Selling Beautiful Births: The Use of Evidence by Brazil's Humanised Birth Movement Lucy C. Irvine.

This groundbreaking book takes us around the world in search of birth models that work in order to improve the standard of care for mothers and families everywhere. The contributors describe examples of maternity services from both developing countries and wealthy industrialized societies that apply the latest scientific evidence to support and facilitate normal physiological birth; deal appropriately with complications; and generate excellent birth outcomes—including psychological satisfaction for the mother. The book concludes with a description of the ideology that underlies all these working models—known internationally as the midwifery model of care