Epidemic Politics in Contemporary Vietnam: Public Health and the State (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780755636174)

Through a tumultuous 20th-century period of revolution and foreign wars, Vietnam's public health system was praised by international observers as a "bright light in an epidemiologically dark world," standing out for its accomplishments in infectious disease control. Since the country's transition to a "market economy with socialist orientation" in the mid-1980s, however, some of these achievements have been reversed as the "renovation" of national systems for welfare and health leaves gaps in the social safety net. A series of cholera outbreaks that spread through Northern Vietnam in 2007-2010 revealed the paradoxes, contradictions, and challenges that Vietnam faces in its post-transition period.

This book presents an anthropological analysis of the political, economic, and infrastructural inputs to these epidemics and suggests how the most commonly repeated accounts of disease spread misdirected public attention and suppressed awareness of risk factors in Vietnam's capital. Drawing a parallel to the experience of novel coronavirus in Asia and beyond, this book reflects on how political priorities, economic forces, and cultural struggles influence the experience and the epidemiology of infectious disease.

Author: Martha Lincoln
ISBN-10: 0755636171
ISBN-13: 9780755636174
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Language: English
Published: 12/02/2021
Pages: 232
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.56d