Chapter Six. Colonial health care

Abstract

The provision of health care services in Senegal complemented taxation and military force as a means of facilitating minority control of the largely rural population of West Africa. The insertion of these African personnel into the health care equation as agents of French colonial policy was indicative of two characteristics of the development of Senegalese health care. First, it underscored the ongoing process of the integration of the region’s health care systems. Second, as a part of elite formation, the creation of African cadre helped the evolution of new attitudes that became part of the rationale and driving force behind the colonial health care structure. It was an attitudinal formation that was so formidable that it, in fact, became the basis for the post-colonial distribution of health care services. Those attitudes were the essentials of a new health care practitioner.Keywords: colonial health care; French colonial policy; health care practitioner; health care services; military force; post-colonial distribution; Senegalese health care; taxation; West Africa