Abstract

Deriving funding from missionary sources in Ireland, Britain and the USA, and from international leprosy relief organizations such as the British Empire Leprosy Relief Association (BELRA) and drawing on developing capacities in international public health under the auspices of WHO and UNICEF through the 1950s, the Roman Catholic Mission Ogoja Leprosy Scheme applied international expertise at a local level with ever-increasing success and coverage. This paper supplements the presentation of a successful leprosy control program in missionary narratives with an appreciation of how international medical politics shaped the parameters of success and the development of therapeutic understanding in the late colonial period in Nigeria.

Highlights

  • I n 1957 Thomas McGettrick, Catholic Bishop of Ogoja in Eastern Nigeria1 penned a chastening meditation on the progress achieved in twelve years of Catholic missionary leprosy control in the north of Ogoja Province

  • Concurring with the growing recognition that, by the mid-1950s, Ogoja Province represented Eastern Nigeria’s most persistent reservoir of new leprosy cases, McGettrick’s assessment was targeted at a Catholic readership proud of “the heroism of her missionaries” (McGlade, 1967, p. 17) and willing to fund the works of these missionaries

  • Visitation Chambers, the Irish doctor in charge of the Roman Catholic Mission (RCM) leprosy control programme in Ogoja, where the day-to-day running of the programme was described in some detail

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Summary

John Manton

MANTON, J.: ‘Global and local contexts: the Northern Ogoja Leprosy Scheme, Nigeria, 1945-1960’. Ciências, Saúde — Manguinhos, vol 10 (supplement 1): 209-23, 2003. A missão católica Ogoja Leprosy Scheme aplicou, em nível local, os conhecimentos internacionais de ponta em lepra, com sucesso e resultados abrangentes, graças ao apoio financeiro de instituições missionárias da Irlanda, da Grã-Bretanha e dos Estados Unidos, assim como de organizações internacionais como o British Empire Leprosy Relief Association (BELRA). O presente artigo combina a apresentação de um bem-sucedido programa de controle da lepra, por obra de missionários, com a análise sobre como as políticas médicas internacionais modelaram os parâmetros de sucesso e o desenvolvimento de conhecimentos terapêuticos na Nigéria, no final do período colonial.

Introduction
Medical Missionaries of Mary
World Health Organization

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