The history of endemic diseases, epidemics and pandemics in Africa shows, contrary to a stubborn belief, that the continent has had a long experience of biomedicine - its theory, techniques, and modes of action.
During and after this period, Africa played an essential role in the discovery and treatment of many diseases such as malaria, trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis and plague (Packard 2007; Webb 2013).
The spread of biomedicine in Africa did however take place in an oppressive colonial context, providing the colonial regime with some of its most effective instruments of control: displacement of populations, cordons sanitaires, collective diagnoses, forced treatment, fertility and birth control policies, and invasions of the privacy of the body of the colonized peoples (Hunt 1990; Summers 1991; Thomas 2003).
Other diseases linked to the economy and colonial upheavals, such as the industrial epidemics of silicosis and tuberculosis, spread among migrant workers in the diamond and gold mines of South Africa (Packart 1989; McCullock 2012).
Thanks to the contacts of the Karks and the training they gave to many doctors and researchers who spent time as interns at their Polela clinic, the community centres were a success, spreading to South Africa and the rest of the world, especially in the United States.
