Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the fieldwork in Angola on anti-sleeping-sickness campaigns and implementation of verbal autopsy, this paper highlights the importance of qualitative experiences and research to unpack the quantitative imaginary dominating global health archipelagos.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on the fieldwork in Angola carried out between 2008-2012 on the campaigns against sleeping-sickness and implementation of verbal autopsy tool, this presentation attempts to highlight the role and importance of qualitative experiences and research to unpack the quantitative imaginary dominating global health archipelagos.

Actions against Human African trypanosomiasis in Angola started over century ago but the modus operandi of such programs changed little. The colonial programs with its statistics, images and publications still play a key role on the new idea of elimination. However, a more careful attention to such colonial representations, based on oral history and fieldwork carried out amidst post-independence programs hint at a more nuanced reality. The path to elimination may not be so smooth and easy.

Using qualitative large toolkit of qualitative methodologies it is possible to unpack persuasive fictions of present-day global health agenda, that of elimination of a disease or the statistical establishment of mortality causes amidst a peri-urban community.

This paper intends to bring to the fore how qualitative data on the complex social realities, cultural cosmovisions, economic and political contexts and glocal health settings are central to map the hurdles any conceptualization of global health program faces in its implementation, be it for elimination or to use a specific evaluation instrument such as that of verbal autopsy, to assert the main diseases most affecting a community.