The Effects of Racial Injustice in the Health Sector on Black Indigenous Africans in Uganda

This article discusses the nexus between Youth, Peace, and Security (YPS) and health, especially in relation to Black indigenous Africans living with autoimmune diseases in Uganda. Additionally, it also discusses the influence of colonialism and neocolonialism on health, and the impact on peace-building and security.

Note on the use of the term ‘African(s)’ in this article: During the partitioning of Africa by the colonialists into African countries, many indigenous African cultures were divided into two or even three parts, especially those that existed along the established country borders. For example, Uganda shares borders and cultures with South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and many Ugandans have multiple IDs. In this article, ‘Africans’ is an inclusive term that refers to people who have multiple nationalities and belong to multiple cultures.

The nexus between YPS and health is often unrecognised and ignored within international peace and security processes, since it mainly affects internal security. However, youth—who make up the majority of Uganda’s population—are especially vulnerable to health insecurities. Poor access to healthcare and health education can hinder their development and contributions to peace-building. Sadly, most peace-builders and global peace-building institutions are primarily interested in military-related insecurity, due to the prevalence of military conflicts around the world. There is less interest in non-military related insecurity that threatens peace-building, especially post-conflict insecurity, such as economic, health, food, political, and environmental crises. In this article, I focus on the health crisis and how it affects peace and security at a national level in Uganda, and explore the impact of this on Black indigenous Africans suffering from Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), otherwise known as Lupus.

The health sector greatly influences people’s way of thinking through the medical advice given to them by doctors, who may not always be familiar with certain diseases or lack the resources to diagnose patients accurately. This reliance on guesswork, if not properly managed, can easily lead to unforeseen insecurity within a country. This can happen if the health sector is poorly managed and/or poorly funded. Such insecurity may lead to increased cases of anxiety, depression, and drug addictions, factors that can lead to increased violence against women and girls, thefts, gun violence, psychopathic tendencies, suicidal tendencies, and suicides within a nation. These elements all threaten national peace and security. Youth are particularly affected by these health crises, as they often lack access to mental health services and support, increasing the risks of violence and instability.

Some of the root causes of a poorly managed and funded health sector are :

Colonisation, where Western-led donor institutions fund Western-led institutions to implement health related research and implement innovative projects, at the disadvantage of Black, Indigenous and People Of Colour (BIPOC).
Global systemic racial and ethnic injustice, where Western-led research institutions, white researchers, and Western-led projects target and serve white communities at the disadvantage of BIPOC, especially while working on rare diseases like Lupus.
Lack of resources for research on autoimmune diseases among BIPOC within the health sector.

The effects of the root causes mentioned above can be best observed with autoimmune diseases, diseases which cause the immune system to accidentally attack healthy cells within a patient’s body, such as Lupus. According to studies conducted worldwide until recent years, autoimmune diseases like lupus were most commonly reported among white people. However, new research is now uncovering the actual prevalence of autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, in BIPOC communities. As a result, global research on such diseases have mainly been carried out by white-led research institutions and researchers, who researched the symptoms manifesting in white people. The standard criteria for diagnosing people suspected of suffering from autoimmune diseases, especially Lupus, is based on this research. This led to widespread misconceptions in the medical sector, particularly among Black indigenous African doctors, global researchers, and donors, that autoimmune diseases like Lupus mainly affect white people and are very rare among black indigenous African people or people of color around the world.

Today, practical medical evidence confirms that Lupus and related diseases are most common and severe among BIPOC. However, due to established and institutionalised racially biased medical research, it is more challenging for medical doctors globally to diagnose BIPOC with autoimmune diseases like Lupus, due to the absence of research and funding on symptoms of autoimmune diseases among BIPOC, particularly from indigenous communities in Africa. Youth in these communities often go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, which can severely impact their quality of life and prevent them from playing active roles in peace-building.

As a result, many BIPOC communities around the world, especially Black indigenous Africans in Uganda, have been under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed, with patients receiving unnecessary or harmful treatments for increasing profit. This increases cases of anxiety, depression, violence, suicidal tendencies, psychopathic tendencies and suicides, threatening peace-building efforts and security within Uganda, and other countries where BIPOC make up a large section of the population. The health-related challenges experienced by youth, such as untreated conditions and lack of mental health support, create further barriers to their engagement in peace efforts, often leading to disenfranchisement.

In conclusion, colonisation and racial injustice in health not only destroy health systems in BIPOC communities and countries like Uganda that are mainly dominated by youth (with more than three quarters of its citizens being below the age of 35), but also affect sustainable peace and security in these communities by increasing cases of health-related violence. For young peace-builders, addressing the inequities in health systems is critical, as their own well-being and capacity to foster peace are directly linked to these challenges.

References

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About the author:

Mpagi Derrick is a lawyer and activist with over seven years of experience in the non-profit sector. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in law from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. Over the past seven years, Derrick has advocated for the decolonization of Africa, particularly the peace building, health, governance and trade sectors. Currently, he is the executive director at MIGHT Foundation, a non-profit organisation in Uganda, where he strengthens his work on decolonisation: through village to national / bottom-up accountability dialogues; By developing bottom-up national policies including YPS; By enhancing the influence and relevance of black indigenous African cultures; By raising awareness on decolonisation in health, and through technology, i.e a mobile application