Kyoungsoo Park

Job title: 
PhD Candidate
Department: 
Medical Anthropology
Research interests: 

Fellowship: Rocca Pre-Dissertation
Fellowship Year: 2025
Project Theme/Title: Still Lives Ongoing: The Body Politics and the Futurity in Tanzania


Abstract: My research proposes exploring South Korea’s parasitic disease control (schistosomiasis) in Tanzania by examining the intertwined between global health organizations, Korean missionaries, and local people’s healing practices. Schistosomiasis, prevalent in Lake Victoria and causing chronic health issues, poses a significant threat to limited diagnoses and medicines, which are attributed to a shortage of researchers and funding (Medicins Sans Frontiers, 2021). For the past ten years (2013-2023), Tanzania mainland had the highest schistosomiasis prevalence rates (28.89%), and the going up of the pooled prevalence, whereby for (2013-2018) and (2018-2023) revealed 23.41% and 30.06%. Mwanza was one of the most prevalent regions, with a pooled prevalence of 51.19% (Mbugi et al., 2024).