Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Medicine
Episode: Leslie Anne Hadfield, "A Bold Profession: African Nurses in Rural Apartheid South Africa" (U Wisconsin Press, 2021)
Description: The first African nurse was certified in the Ciskei region of South Africa during the early decades of the twentieth century. Since then, African nurses have played a key role in the expansion and development of healthcare services in South Africa, particularly in rural areas. Using the stories of retired African nurses who worked in the Ciskei between 1950 and 1980, Leslie Anne Hatfield documents and contextualizes the achievements of these remarkable women. Their stories were prefaced by the last decades of British colonialism and shaped by the rise of apartheid and the creation of African homelands. In spite of the...