Underbelly

Childhood Diarrhea and the Hidden Local Realities of Global Health

Author  Rachel Hall-Clifford Foreword by  Waleska Lopez Canu Afterword by  Arthur Kleinman
Underbelly

An unsettling exploration of the hidden power dynamics of global health, seen through the lens of childhood diarrhea and its treatment within the Guatemalan context.

Deaths from childhood diarrhea seem preposterous in high-income countries. Yet, for children under five years old in the rest of the world, diarrhea is the third highest cause of mortality. Despite a glut of prevention and treatment programming spanning more than forty years, this least glamorous of global health ills remains a critical problem. In Underbelly, Rachel Hall-Clifford takes a hard look at the pathways of global health funding and development policies and the outcomes they deliver for recipient individuals and communities. Drawing on fifteen years of ethnographic research in highland Guatemala, Hall-Clifford focuses on the…