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Background Making misoprostol widely available for management of postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) and post abortion care (PAC) is essential for reducing maternal mortality. Private pharmacies (thereafter called “pharmacies”) are integral in supplying medications to the general public in Senegal. In the case of misoprostol, pharmacies are also the main supplier to public providers and therefore have a key role in increasing its availability. This study seeks to understand knowledge and provision of misoprostol among pharmacy workers in Dakar, Senegal. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Dakar, Senegal. 110 pharmacy workers were interviewed face-to-face to collect information on their knowledge and practice relating to the provision of misoprostol. Results There are low levels of knowledge about misoprostol uses, registration status, treatment regimens and side effects among pharmacy workers, and corresponding low levels of training on its uses for reproductive health. Provision of misoprostol was low; of the 72% ( n  = 79) of pharmacy workers who had heard of the product, 35% ( n  = 27) reported selling it, though rarely for reproductive health indications. Almost half (49%, n  = 25) of the respondents who did not sell misoprostol expressed willingness to do so. The main reasons pharmacy workers gave for not selling the product included stock outs (due to product unavailability from the supplier), perceived lack of demand and unwillingness to stock an abortifacient. Conclusions Knowledge and availability of misoprostol in pharmacies in Senegal is low, posing potential challenges for delivery of post-abortion care and obstetric care. Training is required to address low levels of knowledge of misoprostol registration and uses among pharmacy workers. Barriers that prevent pharmacy workers from stocking misoprostol, including weaknesses in the supply chain and stigmatisation of the product must be addressed. Low reported sales for reproductive health indications also suggest limited prescribing of the product by health providers. Further research is needed to explore the reasons for this barrier to misoprostol availability.

Background: Underdeveloped and underused medical laboratories in sub-Saharan Africa negatively affect the diagnosis and appropriate treatment of ailments.Objective: We identified political, disease-related and socio-economic factors that have shaped the laboratory sector in Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso to inform laboratory-strengthening programmes.Methods: We searched peer-reviewed and grey literature from February 2015 to December 2018 on laboratory and health systems development from colonial times to the present and conducted in-depth interviews with 73 key informants involved in (inter)national health or laboratory policy, organisation, practice or training. This article depended on the key informants’ accounts due to the paucity of literature on laboratory development in francophone West African countries. Literature and interview findings were triangulated and are presented chronologically.Results: Until around 1990 there were a few disease-specific research laboratories; only the larger hospitals and district health facilities housed a rudimentary laboratory. The 1990s brought the advent of donor-dictated, vertical, endemic and epidemic disease programmes and laboratories. Despite decentralising from the national level to the regional and district levels, these vertical laboratory programmes biased national health resource allocation deleteriously neglecting the development of the horizontal, general-health laboratory. After the year 2000, the general-health laboratory system received more attention when, influenced by the World Health Organization, national networks and (sub-)directorates of laboratories were installed.Conclusion: To advance national general healthcare, as opposed to disease-specific healthcare, national laboratory directors and experts in general laboratory development should be consulted when national policies are made with potential laboratory donors.

Pharmacy students at the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar must research and write a thesis to graduate. Thésards who took topics in analytical chemistry and toxicology describe their thesis work as a temporary opportunity to perform ‘street-level’ public health research that they regard as ‘relevant’ to the quality of people's lives. Expecting futures in the private commercial sector, thésards regretfully leave the thesis behind. This article explores the parenthetical nature of this moment – its brief openings and more durable closures – as part of the history of ways of being a pharmacist in post-colonial Senegal. The thesis as an interlude in students’ biographies, curtailed by narrowed horizons of expectation, evokes other contractions: in the range of professional roles open to Senegalese pharmacists, and in the circuits of public health with which they might engage. For thésards, fieldwork, government work and commercial work entail spatial practices and imaginations; different ways of moving around the city and of tracing urban space that define pharmacists’ roles in terms of the modes through which they engage with broader collectivities. Mapping thésards’ parenthesis in Dakar is a means of capturing both their urban experience of work and the intertwining spatial, temporal and affective dimensions associated with this work. The past, probable and possible trajectories of pharmacy work are imprinted and imagined in the space of the city as field, market and polis. Pharmacists’ prospects and aspirations are caught up in broader shifts in how education, (un)employment and entrepreneurship animate relations of association and exchange in Senegal. Afin d'obtenir leur diplôme, les étudiants en pharmacie à l'Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar doivent préparer et rédiger une thèse. Parmi les thésards qui ont pris des sujets de thèse en chimique analytique et toxicologie, certain(e)s décrivent ce travail comme opportunité temporaire de faire de la recherche en santé publique “au niveau de la rue,” c'est à dire pertinente au bien-être des populations. Anticipant un avenir dans le secteur commercial privé, les thésards regrettent devoir tourner la page sur ce travail au terme de leurs études. Cet article explore la nature parenthétique de la thèse, en tant que moment de brèves ouvertures qui se referment ensuite durablement, et la situe dans l'histoire des manières d’être pharmacien au Sénégal post-colonial. La thèse apparait comme interlude dans la biographie des étudiants, écourtée par le resserement de leurs perspectives d'avenir, evoquant ainsi d'autres contractions: dans l’éventail des rôles professionnels et dans les circuits de santé publiques ouverts aux pharmacien(ne)s sénégalais(es). Le travail de terrain, le travail fonctionnaire et le travail commercial comportent pour les thésards des pratiques et imaginations spatiales ; différentes manières de se déplacer dans la ville et de tracer l'espace urbain, chacune définissant le rôle pharmacien en terme de ses modes d'engagement avec les collectivités. La projection de cette parenthèse sur la carte de Dakar nous donne un moyen de saisir à la fois l'experience urbaine de leur travail de terrain et l'imbrication de ses dimensions spatiales, temporelles et affectives. Les trajectoires passées, probables et possibles du travail pharmacien s'imprègnent et sont imaginées dans l'espace de la ville en tant que terrain, marché et polis. Les perspectives et aspirations des pharmacien(ne)s relèvent de dynamiques historiques plus larges, changeant la manière dont l’éducation, l'emploi (et le chômage) et l'entrepreunariat animent les relations d'association et d’échange au Sénégal.

In the last forty years, the literature on African women's history has expanded dramatically. Despite such improvement, more studies on female professionals and female property owners are needed, especially with regard to examining the role of women who enter and prosper in medical fields that are considered \"masculine,\" such as medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy. By focusing on the life histories of women pharmacists, this article situates their careers within the overall history of formal education and biomedical health care in mid-to-late twentieth century Senegal. This article illustrates that not only have women acquired property through formal mechanisms but they have also consolidated power through professional leadership positions. The history of female pharmacists in Senegal is central to an understanding of the health sector, especially since, in Senegal, pharmacists are at the forefront of biomedical care.

While perusing the booths in the exhibit hall at the 2011 International Pharmaceutical Forum in Dakar, Senegal, the author was attracted to the booth of Mayite Equivalence. Mayite Equivalence is a locally produced and distributed pharmaceutical reference manual with more than 2,000 entries on biomedical drugs circulating in the Senegalese marketplace. The accompanying booth was well-staffed and bustling with visitors and great interest. Mayite Equivalence was created by a local pharmacist, Maimouna Diop, in response to recent changes to the local pharmaceutical marketplace. Maimouna Diop's work is indicative of a larger discourse on developing economies, public health, and affordable access to biomedical drugs. When the author began her early research on pharmacy practice and pharmaceutical trade networks in Senegal in 2000, there existed a dearth of generic drug production, diversified streams of pharmaceutical importation, and local production of drugs. Only a small percentage of state-sanctioned drugs were distributed as generics. In recent years, a growing demand for generic drugs has materialized.

Increasingly in the literature on underdevelopment, there is growing recognition of colonialism's pernicious effects on women's status in Africa, as elsewhere. Colonialism, it is argued, destroyed the traditional sex role balance both through underestimating and undermining women's economic role, as well as through the havoc colonialists raised in the social sphere by such varied means as forced labor and cash cropping (cf. Seidman, 1975; Diarra, 1971; Tinker, 1975). And yet there is a highly visible elite of African women—women well-traveled, usually professionally trained and/or university educated. If indeed colonialism did have such negative effects on women's status as are now being claimed, how then do we account for the rise of this female elite? On the basis of data gathered through interviews in Senegal during the autumn and winter of 1974, we will argue that these women are indeed exceptions, that elite women sampled came from highly privileged family backgrounds in which the father was already involved in the colonial order. We will also examine their motivations for acquiring higher education and professional training and their opinions on topics related to colonialism, development, and women's status. From this data we can then better evaluate both their evolution as an elite and their relationship to other women within the particular developing society. Dakar was chosen as a research site both for the availability of archival records from the colonial era and for its significant population of highly educated women. Dakar, as the former capital of French West Africa, was a center for education, with the Section des Sage Femmes of the Medical School (opened in 1922) and the Ecole Normole des Jeunes Filles at Rifisque (opened in 1938), both located within the greater urban area. These two schools served as the major secondary training schools for girls from all over French West Africa during the colonial era: their graduates were among the first women professionals, and many have since obtained high positions in many sectors of their societies.