French colonial medical policy subordinated African health care to economic development

Evidence

Carde’s overall approach to medical assistance nevertheless mirrored his approach to public works: that is to say, more had to be done with less. “Preventive and social medicine” could not occur at the expense of “economic development.” Thus colonies were to increase health care expenditures, but to no more than 12 percent of their budgets. … Expensive European doctors, while indispensable as supervisors, were only a small part of the solution. Carde was suspicious of doctors; he accused them of refusing the social and mobile role that Dakar was assigning them, preferring to stay in their dispensaries. Existing French and African personnel-teachers, administrators and their wives, engineers, tirailleurs and their wives, even missionaries-could demonstrate modern prophylaxis as or more effectively. What were needed were more African auxiliaries trained within each colony, who could take the message of preventive hygiene directly to villagers of similar ethnicity. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 775

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the book’s core thesis about how France’s ‘civilizing mission’ ideology in West Africa was subordinated to economic extraction and colonial labor demands.