Medical disposals and problem solving: About high blood pressure in Morocco

Abstract

In this article, I analyze how in basic health-care facilities in Morocco, general practitioners transform patients’ problems into solvable problems, taking into account constraints related to medical standards, financial issues, the organization of the health system, and care. My focus is on hypertension, or high blood pressure. I argue that standards allow the solving of patients’ problems through the production of an entity called high blood pressure. However, the ‘high blood pressure’ enacted is different from the entity defined by standards. Fragments of the latter, borrowed from other contexts, are put to work in Morocco, while the material arrangements needed to enforce and have them work without discontinuities do not exist. This contributes to the production of an entity configured at a moment in time between standards and patients’ lives.