The Informal Market of Medicines in Rural Senegal
The birth of a medicine’s market says as “informal” occurred at the beginning of the 1980’s. Since then, it’s always increasing in the Southern countries of the world. Beside the major health public problem that it constitutes, it is an health-care seeking massively used by the populations. That is why it is important to describe how it is working and to understand the function that it’s assuming towards the populations. In this way, during the 2002 rainy season, we’ve made an ethnographic investigation (direct and participative observations, informal and non-directive interviews) towards the sellers of medicines from a rural zone in Senegal, in which the availability and the accessibility of medicines are problematic. The detailed description of this selling’s actors make us understand the specific organisation of this market, which proposes to the populations an optimal access to the medicines and, sometimes, therapeutic advises. This market presents lots of advantages, rather economic than cultural and social, and it fits very well to the way of life of the populations. Even though it constitutes some obvious health risks, it is primordial -to define health policies- to measure the assets of this popular offer of health.