Beyond Surgery: Injury, Healing, and Religion at an Ethiopian Hospital

by Anita Hannig

Over the past few decades, maternal childbirth injuries have become a potent symbol of Western biomedical intervention in Africa, affecting over one million women across the global south. Western-funded hospitals have sprung up, offering surgical sutures that ostensibly allow women who suffer from obstetric fistula to return to their communities in full health. Journalists, NGO staff, celebrities, and some physicians have crafted a stock narrative around this injury, depicting afflicted women as victims of a backward culture who have their fortunes dramatically reversed by Western aid. With Beyond Surgery , medical anthropologist Anita Hannig unsettles this picture for the first time and reveals the complicated truth behind the idea of biomedical intervention as quick-fix salvation.
 
Through her in-depth ethnography of two repair and rehabilitation centers operating in Ethiopia, Hannig takes the reader deep into a world inside hospital walls, where women recount stories of loss and belonging, shame and delight. As she chronicles the lived experiences of fistula patients in clinical treatment, Hannig explores the danger of labeling “culture” the culprit, showing how this common argument ignores the larger problem of insufficient medical access in rural Africa. Beyond Surgery portrays the complex social outcomes of surgery in an effort to deepen our understanding of medical missions in Africa, expose cultural biases, and clear the path toward more effective ways of delivering care to those who need it most.

256 pages, Paperback

Published April 24, 2017

Reviews

[Gabby R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hannig’s work provides great insight into the experiences of women with obstetric fistula in Ethiopia, challenging dominant narratives regarding their origin and cause. I particularly found discussions of the soteriological in biomedical treatments of fistulas intriguing, along with how patients perceived the divine to act through medical experts. I would say this ethnography is an accessible read for those with limited knowledge of medical anthropology and the topic.

[John Coatney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating look into how the standard narrative of an issue (here, vesicovaginal fistula) is often overly simplified or, in some cases, mistaken, with potentially deleterious results in terms of potential funding/development resources. Hannig challenges the common presupposition that fistula is caused primarily by early marriages (rather, it typically results after delayed/non-existant obstetrical care), and that it nearly always results in pariahism (rather, friends and family are typically deliberate and loving caretakers).

Most interesting for me (and the reason I picked up the book) was Hannig's treatment of fistula patients as Orthodox Christians - how women with fistulae practice their Orthodox faith under the limitations place on them by the Church (or, more often, by their own inhibitions associated with purity). Another interesting aspect involved the interaction of Protestant doctors and medical organizations with primarily Orthodox (and secondarily Muslim) patients.

A really great introduction to this topic, coupled with signifiant cultural and religious engagement.