Tuberculosis in the colonial and independent British Caribbean

Overview

This project, undertaken by Dr Henrice Altink from the History Department, investigates the role of race and ethnicity in the prevention, control and treatment of Tuberculosis (TB) in the British Caribbean in the decades before and after independence. The funding allowed Dr Altink to conduct substantial archival research in the Caribbean and to liaise with many other scholars in the field with a view to setting up an externally-funded international research network.

Her archival research has revealed that there were significant differences in the control of TB across the region, with important implications for wider understandings of the intersections between race, ethnicity and class at this period and in this area. She has delivered three Conference papers, is working on several articles and a book and was a awarded a grant to continue her archival explorations in the Rockefeller Archive Centre.

She has been awarded a British Academy International Mobility and Partnership grant 'Public Health : a past perspective' to organise three conferences on the theme of Public Health in Latin America and the Caribbean. The first will take place in July 2014 and will include two panels on TB. She has been asked by Chatto and Pickering to write a book proposal for a book that will include papers from all the three conferences.

In detail

This project aimed to assess the possibility of an externally-funded international research network on the role of race and ethnicity in the prevention, control and treatment of Tuberculosis (TB) in the British Caribbean in the decades preceding and following independence. Dr Altink spent time in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad scoping archival sources on TB, meeting with potential collaborators at the University of the West Indies and exploring the possibility of conducting oral history. She has also liaised with numerous other scholars in the Caribbean, Latin America and North America working on TB.

The research concentrates on three distinct parts of the region: Jamaica (95% of the population of African descent), Barbados (the largest white minority) and Trinidad and Tobago (the largest Indian-Caribbean minority). It assesses the financial and other support that colonial governments received from the Imperial government as well the Rockefeller Foundation and other American organisations in their fight against TB. It also investigates the role played by voluntary and professional health workers in the prevention, control and treatment of the disease; the responses of the population to prevention and control campaigns; and the attitude of TB patients towards the treatment offered in sanatoria.

The archival research has so far shown significant differences in the control of TB across the region. For example, while an anti-tuberculosis society was set up in Trinidad in 1908, it took until 1928 before one was established in Jamaica and Barbados only got one in the post-World-War-Two period. In addition, the exercise showed that contrary to expectations, the control of TB lessened in the years following independence. Dr Altink is now planning further research to explore the reasons behind these differences and changes over time and has been awarded a Rockefeller archive centre grant of $2,500 to spend two weeks in the archive looking at material relating to the Jamaican Tuberculosis Commission.

The resulting social and cultural history of public health in the British Caribbean will shed greater light on the nature of colonial rule in the region, in particular the extent to which colonial governments helped to uphold racial and class hierarchies. It will also challenge the idea that race and ethnicity ceased to matter after independence by exploring in detail the attitude of post-colonial governments towards the control and treatment of TB. The research will add to existing scholarship on Caribbean history and the history of colonial and post-colonial health and medicine. Caribbean historians have only recently begun to address medical practices, discourses and professions. Most of this work, however, focuses on child and maternal welfare and has largely ignored major diseases, international health organisations, and large-scale specialist hospitals, such as TB sanatoriums.

Dr Altink has given three conference papers to share some of the preliminary findings: on the attitudes of African Jamaican politicans towards TB control between 1918-1938, on the inability of the Jamaican government to conform to WHO's national TB programme in the 1960s and 1970s, and on the problems with sources on TB in the Anglophone Caribbean. She is working on several articles and a book.

She has been awarded a British Academy International Mobility and Partnership grant 'Public Health : a past perspective' to organise three conferences on the theme of Public Health in Latin America and the Caribbean. The first will take place in July 2014 and will include two panels on TB. She has been asked by Chatto and Pickering to write a book proposal for a book that will include papers from all the three conferences.

Outputs

Grants

• Henrice Altink, Rockefeller Archive Centre, Grant-in-aid application, £1,700
• Henrice Altink, British Academy, International Mobility and Partnership Scheme: 'Public Health: a past perspective', £26,200

Publications

• Altink, H. (2014). Fight TB with BCG: mass vaccination campaigns in the British Caribbean, 1951-56. Medical History