Abstract
Health issues constitute a relevant starting point to investigate the Sultanate’s regional integration and its bonds with more distant areas: this field includes flows of technologies and liquid assets as well as ideas and individuals. This contribution is based on a social anthropology research focused on the particular case of inherited blood disorders (IBD) in Oman. These serious genetic diseases are frequently stigmatized as consequences of a so-called “traditional” behaviour that encourages local consanguineous marriages – symbolically linked to the interior of Oman – as opposed to “respectable” modernism that advocates avoidance of endogamy – supposedly characteristic of the urban coastal areas. Thus, social representations of these diseases are embodied in the country’s geography itself; furthermore, diagnosis of IBD, treatments, and even patients’ survival involve numerous local and/or regional interactions. The ethnographic study of these diseases in Oman, dealing with different communities and social fields, reveals some of the Sultanate’s past and present forms of translocality. Using the example of inherited blood disorders, this chapter also aims at describing the networks Oman belongs to, whether one considers “therapeutic journeys”, the social stakes of genetics research, implementation of policies regarding genetic health or transnational genealogical reconstructions.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. Beaudevin 2010. The research was partly hosted by Sultan Qaboos University and granted ethical approval by the relevant committee of the Omani Ministry of Health. Fieldwork has been conducted between 2005 and 2009.
- 2.
Ethnography is a comprehensive combination of participant observation, informal conversations and semi-structured interviews, as well as review of the local press and relevant archives. It usually involves a long presence in the field; for this study, the fieldwork lasted about 18 months.
- 3.
Quotes from interviews are given in italics.
- 4.
Defined as “the first level of contact of individuals, the family and community with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work, [that] constitutes the first element of a continuing health care process” (World Health Organization 1978: article VI).
- 5.
See Fig. 6.2 showing the different levels of health care institutions in the Muscat region.
- 6.
All names are pseudonyms, as agreed with the interviewees. Only the identities of the officials interviewed in their professional context remain unchanged.
- 7.
For a discussion of this opposition, see Valeri (2009), Mokhtar (in this volume).
- 8.
A public health term that designates the number of cases of a precise disorder that are known in a population at a precise moment, compared with the total size of this population.
- 9.
This aspect is related to lay representations of communities and ancestry in Oman that will be addressed below.
- 10.
Especially from Kerala. For an anthropological study of this specific migration route and its contemporary consequences, see Percot (2006).
- 11.
In the private health care sector, Omanization has reached about 7 % (Ministry of Health 2010: 4.7).
- 12.
This situation will probably change in the near future, since a specialized genetics centre was inaugurated in 2012 in the capital, next to the Royal Hospital.
- 13.
See for instance the “Oman Family Study” carried out by the Texas Biomedical Research Institute (http://txbiomed.org/departments/genetics_detail.aspx?p=48; accessed 7 August 2011).
- 14.
These figures are similar in neighbouring countries: in Saudi Arabia for example, these values are 56 % and 22.4 % respectively (El-Mouzan et al. 2007).
- 15.
Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s foundation, which awards funds to medical sciences projects (http://www.hmaward.org.ae, accessed 7 August 2011).
- 16.
See http://www.cags.org.ae/ctga_search.html. Accessed 7 August 2011.
- 17.
- 18.
This contribution is not the proper place for a longer semantic discussion, but Roberts and Scheper-Hughes (2011a) interestingly speak about “medical migrations”.
- 19.
Literally: “office”, “administration”. I borrow Valeri’s definition in the Omani context (2009: 180): “This administration has the role of filtering files coming to the ruler, while managing national and private affairs which do not concern any other department but do not require the Sultan’s personal intervention.”
- 20.
For example, through the search for medical information on the Internet or the necessary e-mail exchanges with the medical team, prior to the journey.
- 21.
See for example the webpage of the Indian company Apollo, dedicated to “International patients”, http://www.apollohospitals.com/international_patient_services.php (Accessed 7 August 2011). For an anthropological analysis of the hospitals’ websites in the context of therapeutic journeys, see Sobo et al. (2011).
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Acknowledgments
I want to express my gratitude to patients, families and health practitioners, who trusted me and let me settle in their everyday life, in hospitals or at home, in Muscat and elsewhere.
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Beaudevin, C. (2013). Of Red Cells, Translocality and Origins: Inherited Blood Disorders in Oman. In: Wippel, S. (eds) Regionalizing Oman. United Nations University Series on Regionalism, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6821-5_6
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