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Accepted Paper:
An ethnographic study on medicines, care, and the responsibility of antimicrobial resistance amidst disorder and decline in Yangon, Myanmar
Yuzana Khine Zaw
(London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I discuss how I adapted the methodological approach described in Whyte et al.’s Social Lives of Medicines, to trace medicines (antibiotics) in Yangon, Myanmar - a context of disorder and decline resulting from decades of authoritarian rule.
Paper long abstract:
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has gained much attention, described by some as a global health emergency. At the 2015 World Health Assembly, countries around the world were asked to create national action plans to address AMR, following a blueprint of the World Health Organization’s Global Action Plan (GAP). In this paper, I discuss how I adapted the methodological approach described in Whyte et al.’s Social Lives of Medicines, to trace medicines from households; drug shops; private practices; markets; and pharmaceutical companies in Yangon, Myanmar - a context of disorder and decline. Myanmar, with its authoritarian state and ongoing civil wars, is governed by a fragmentary and volatile rule of law which I have characterised as ‘disorder and decline’. Following this approach, my ethnographic fieldwork illustrates how efforts under the umbrellas of awareness raising and changing behaviours in order to curb antibiotic misuse, can reinforce rather than relieve the conditions that lead to reliance on antibiotics through informal routes. Last, I describe how coping mechanisms have developed in the areas of medicine regulation, prescription, and use as residents adapt to a governance structure characterised by caprice and neglect.