28 September 2021
A new book, co-authored by Post-doctoral Researcher with the South African Research Chair in Science Communication, Dr Bankole Falade, has just been released by Palgrave Macmillian. The book is titled Falade, B. A. and Murire, M. (2021) Health Communication and disease in Africa: beliefs, traditions and stigma. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.
The book has 17 chapters addressing different health issues across the continent, bringing together multidisciplinary authors from across Africa and academics from other parts of the world. It highlights and critically examines the social cultural and economic factors in public understanding of health and illness in Africa, provides recommendations about how to overcome the identified obstacles and improve uptake of health information and, uniquely advocates for the combination of traditional communication strategies with western or mainstream approaches.
In a foreword, Emeritus Professor Catherine Campbell, of the London School of economics and Political Science, remarks that the “book presents a compelling vision of an approach that is deeply rooted in African scholarship. This is a vision that pays close attention to the big picture of macro-social context. It also takes full account of the daily lives and worldviews of those whose lives are distant from the scholarly theories, global guidelines and national and regional strategies that dominate this field of practice.”
