Calls to rid official medical research of racial stereotypes are being resiste d, reports Marion Edmunds
The Health Department is resisting challenges to take race categories out of h ealth research, even though the ANC is committed to non-racism in the new Sout h Africa.
Four academics associated with the Medical Research Council, including Dr Geor ge Ellison from the Institute of Behavioural Sciences and Dr L Richter from th e Centre of Epidemiological Research in Southern Africa, have argued for the r emoval of race classification in research in a recent paper published in the S outh African Medical Journal.
The paper calls for journals not to publish articles which sift data through t he categories of coloureds, blacks, Indians and whites. They argue such catego ries create false perceptions about the cause of diseases and suggest some rac e groups are unhealthier than others by virtue of their genes.
The academics also argue that segregation of data reinforces racial stereotype s, and should only be used when entirely justified. They call on the health au thorities to stop collecting data which is disaggregated by race, ethnicity or population group, unless absolutely necessary.
However, Dr Lindiwe Makubalo, the director of Health Systems Research and Epid emiology in the Department of Health, disagrees: “At this stage in the history of South Africa it is still important that we retain race and ethnicity categ
ories in research. Because of our apartheid history, it is important from a pu blic health perspective that in redressing health inequalities we carefully mo nitor the impact of health programmes and equity redistribution in terms of these very g roupings.
“I would argue that in general the department would consider it premature to r emove the concept of race or ethnicity from research … because we need to mo nitor the impact of programmes and interventions aimed at redressing past ineq ualities in health.”
The same view was advanced by the chair of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committ ee on Health, ANC MP Dr Abe Nkomo, who acknowledged there was ongoing debate w ithin the ANC on the issue.
He said, however, it was important to keep such categories in order to measure how much the ANC government had improved the life of communities who had been
isolated by apartheid and disadvantaged by its policies.
Dr Mark Orkin, head of the Central Statistical Service, said: “It is a non seq uitur to argue from the abuse of the population group variable by some analyst s that it should in general be excluded from cogent analysis. Apartheid perver ted lots of concepts; we need to reclaim them rather than abandon them.”