'Impairments of the brain': Global South perspectives on childhood neurodevelopmental disability.
Femke Bannink Mbazzi, Elizabeth S Kawesa
PMID 35524350WHAT IT FOUND
This paper offers no clinical outcomes or evidence of treatment effects.
It uses a single child's story to argue that imported biomedical labels like 'impairment of the brain' can feel meaningless to families when no culturally relevant support exists to follow the diagnosis.
What this paper is
This is a qualitative case study and theoretical essay reflecting on disability definitions in Uganda through the narrative of one child. It reports no clinical outcomes, intervention efficacy, or comparative data, so there are no findings here to change therapeutic practice.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the description of the child's behaviours as evidence of a specific diagnosis or as a validation of a therapeutic approach. The paper explicitly states this single case is not representative of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities in the Global South.