Street Medicine Use in the Southern Countries: The Case of Ouagadougou City, Burkina Faso

Bassiahi Abdramane Soura, Université de Ouagadougou

The sale of medicine outside the official network of pharmacies has grown recent years in sub-Saharan Africa. In many countries, the administrative and political authorities were not able to forbid the import of these drugs, which origin is sometimes badly known, which are sometimes preserved in extreme temperatures and are often of doubtful quality (Fassin 1989). In numerous cities of sub-Saharan Africa in particular, it is today impossible to walk in the street without crossing a salesman of "medicine on the head". The advertising campaigns saying "Street medicine kills" were not either able to decrease the scale of this phenomenon. With my interest in Ouagadougou (capital of Burkina Faso), and by using data resulting essentially from a survey conducted in 2010 on health and health behavior in Ouagadougou, my paper relates to the factors associated with the street medicine use in Southern cities.