Development models, care models: an anthropological interpretation of aids

Abstract

Illness is one area where interaction between nature and culture becomes particularly evident. It is impossible to understand any illness through an exclusively naturalistic approach, but neither is it possible to understand an illness on the basis of a solely cultural approach.

Promoting health always means promoting development, as it assumes a change in lifestyles. If this is true for the developed countries, it is even more so for the developing countries. Every development model presupposes an anthropological frame of reference that guides intervention in one direction or another. A critical evaluation of the accepted model is indispensable to a critical assessment of the health strategies adopted by the Western world to combat AIDS in Africa.