ABSTRACT
This chapter traces some of the many ways that the logics of biomedical practice travel. The case study presents in the chapter explains how a critique of biomedical obstetrics travels. Biomedical elements are grafted onto partial clinical infrastructures, pharmacopeia, and various pre-existing systems of healing. One response to the perceived need for biomedical help in resource low settings is for biomedical practitioners from the global North to bring their skills directly to the region in question. This occurs in two ways: by offering care to people during natural disasters, wars, and epidemics, and by providing intermittent medical and surgical interventions where such care is not locally available fistula repairs, cataract surgery, oral and maxillofacial surgery. In other emergency contexts, including where health systems are damaged or destroyed, groups such as Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF) and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the militaries of donor nations, necessarily care for large numbers of people under these circumstances.
