Colonialism and Public Health: The Case of the Rinderpest Virus in Oromia Regional State in Ethiopia
Journal: Journal of Preventive Medicine
Year: 2018

Background: Colonizers usually present their agenda in positive terms–theirs is a civilizing mission and they pretend to be healers. For the colonized people, on the other hand, colonialism represents poverty and disease or at least disease-causing agents. In Oromia, the rinderpest virus (RPV) epidemic is one of the pathways by which colonialism and racist mindsets caused famine, poverty, diseases and millions of deaths. Objective: The objective of this paper is to learn from the past, envision