3 - Introducing Social Medicine: Inter-Imperial Learning and the Assistência Médica aos Indígenas in the Interwar Period

Summary

In the 1920s, the colonial health services in Angola intensified the campaign against sleeping sickness. In 1923, two anti-sleeping sickness missions were sent to the Congo (1923–6) and Zaire (1923–4) districts.¹ Most importantly, in 1926, the fight against this paradigmatic disease became part of a more comprehensive and well-funded scheme of Assistência Médica aos Indígenas (AMI) or ‘Native Medical Assistance’. The basic concept and terminology of this scheme, which aimed to provide basic healthcare to ‘native’ populations through an expanding network of small hospitals and maternity clinics, with the help of medically trained African auxiliaries, reached back to the late 1890s, when it was first put into practice in French Madagascar. Later, it was adopted in French Indochina, AOF and AEF as well, but coverage remained very limited before the 1920s.² In Angola, Governor-General Norton de Matos had tried to set up an AMI scheme in 1914, but failed due to lack of personnel and money.³ Beyond anti-sleeping sickness and anti-smallpox campaigns, biomedical healthcare had remained limited to Europeans and Africans living in or close to the biggest towns.⁴ This only began to change in 1926, when the newly established AMI services started to provide basic healthcare to Angolan populations in some rural areas.