Colonial medicine’s legacy: How geopolitics reshaped global health as a tool of power, not equity

The Lancet’s narrative treats 'global health' as a tabula rasa, ignoring how Indigenous medical systems (e.g., **Navajo *Hózhǫ́* healing**, **Maori *whakapapa*-based epidemiology**) were systematically dismantled to create markets for pharmaceuticals and 'development' interventions. For example, the **1897 Indian Medical Service Act** in British India banned Ayurvedic practitioners from treating colonial officials, a microcosm of how medical racism was institutionalised. Even today, **traditional medicine is 80% of healthcare in Africa**, yet global health frameworks like the **WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11)** fail to codify non-biomedical diagnostics, reinforcing epistemic violence. The absence of Indigenous data sovereignty movements (e.g., **Māori *Te Mana Rerekē* framework**) in this history is a deliberate erasure of alternative health epistemologies that prioritise community over capital.