The diploma thesis explores the concept of global health and its challenges in realizing its agenda when implemented at local levels in non-Western societies. Through various humanitarian and non-governmental organizations and the World Health Organization, the international community has paid considerable attention to assisting countries in need at a general level and in the form of international interventions during health crises or natural disasters. Such interventions are still based mainly on a biomedical approach to health and disease, reflecting Western ideas about the understanding and perception of the body. To shed light on the relationship between global health and international health interventions in collision with local knowledge systems about certain medical conditions, on the case of Ebola and HIV in African societies, we try to answer the question of how these local knowledge and contexts determine the success and failure of such interventions, while presenting the consequences of a Western approach to solving local crises.
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