Paper short abstract:

My paper will focus on the Bajenu Gox program, a project carried out in Senegal in order to promote maternal health, which connects in an original manner global development policies and local traditions.

Paper long abstract:

The universal access to healthcare systems plays a central role in human rights discourse. In this direction, the idea of global health as a human right appears strictly intertwined with the conception of "community health" as a preliminary condition for local development.

Within this glocal approach to health, my paper will focus on the Bajenu Gox ("The community aunt") program carried out by the Senegalese government in order to promote maternal health and reduce mortality rates. As we will show, its distinguishing feature is the attempt to transfer, to a community level (gox), the "pedagogical role" usually played out in the family by the aunt (bajenu). The choice to refer to local traditions, in order to obtain a greater access to biomedical services, will be the starting point to consider the limits and the challenges of such (bio)political project.

In particular, referring to the results of anthropological fieldwork conducted in Senegal, we will focus on two specific outcomes of the Bajenu Gox institutionalized action. First of all, within the project's aims, their role was to widen the reach of biomedical approach to mothering, that is to increase women presence in a modernized healthcare system. Secondly, their efforts also resulted in offering women the possibility to rely on other therapeutic systems - such as religious and traditional ones - which Senegalese women believe equally necessary to deal with uncertainties related to mothering. As a consequence, we may witness the growing relevance of the Bajenu Gox function in Senegalese society as a professional, able to connect universal human rights with structural health inequalities; global health policies with local needs; modern development with women's traditions.