Healing the Nation: Christian Missionaries, Colonial Healthcare and Disease Prevention in Northern Rhodesia 1924-1960

Using newly digitised colonial medical time-series data, this study makes a first attempt to provide an overview of the development of Western healthcare in Northern Rhodesia. The data is used to elaborate on the extent of the Christian missionary medical outreach to the African populace and the involvement of the African medical workers in establishing and expanding the Western healthcare system in Northern Rhodesia. The article details the colonial government’s contribution to fighting epidemics while accentuating how missionaries and trained Africans aided the colonial government. The findings show that with the help of indigenous auxiliaries, missionaries extended Western medicine to the African population. Missionary hospitals attended to a greater proportion of the local population than the African colonial government hospitals. With different agendas at times, the state cooperated with missionaries to provide healthcare to most of the local people in rural areas. With assistance from the missionaries and trained Africans, the British colonial government played a significant role in fighting outbreaks. However, interventions were sometimes racially segregative, especially in urban areas.