Joint interview with Helena Prado and Mamy Jean-Jacques Razafimahatratra
« Making time for dialogue »
Helena Prado (ORCID 0000-0002-0270-2167) is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Strasbourg (Institute of Ethnology, Faculty of Social Sciences / Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Cultural Studies). Since 2017 she has done research in the anthropology of health, in particular on representations of the body, reproductive and sexual life, and the social management of vector-borne diseases. Mamy Jean-Jacques Razafimahatratra, PhD (ORCID 0000-0002-7238-5179), has extensive research experience in health and the anthropology of health. He currently heads the Research Division of the National Institute of Public and Community Health (INSP) in Antananarivo, Madagascar. They work alongside Denise Hien (ORCID 0000-0002-7073-6924) from Burkina Faso, who holds a research master’s degree in social and cultural anthropology, is a PhD candidate in the sociology of health at Joseph Ki-Zerbo University in Ouagadougou, and is a sociologist with the Groupe de Recherche Action en Santé (GRAS). Together, the three play a key role in running the socio-anthropological studies and in mobilising and engaging communities in the IMPRIMA project.
Valérie Bisson: Can you each tell us about your background?
Helena Prado: I trained in social and cultural anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. I only came to the anthropology of health after my PhD. I first worked on maternal and reproductive health during health emergencies, then on the social management of vector-borne diseases such as Zika and malaria.
Mamy Razafimahatratra: I’m a medical doctor first. At the end of my medical studies I specialised in public health, and then I went on to train in the humanities and social sciences and in the anthropology of health. Today I head the Research Division at the National Institute of Public and Community Health (INSP) in Antananarivo, Madagascar. That puts me at the heart of the issues I care about, such as taking the realities of local populations into account.
VB: How did your paths come together in the IMPRIMA project?
HP: Through a series of chance events and opportunities, we both ended up in the working group on the social component of the project, which focuses on malaria and primaquine. IMPRIMA was designed to approach the clinical trial with a socio-anthropological component built in. During my postdoc on the Zika virus in Brazil, I worked at Ceped (Université Paris Cité) alongside several anthropologists and health demographers who were running interdisciplinary projects funded by European donors and the Global Fund. It turned out we had colleagues in common, including Dolorès Pourette, a health anthropologist who works in Madagascar and Réunion.
MR: It was Arsène Ratsimbasoa, whom I’ve worked with for a long time, who first invited me to look at the project. We realised later that Helena and I had in fact already crossed paths. At the IMPRIMA launch in Strasbourg in November 2023, with the consortium and the whole CNARP team, we started working together on WP3. Helena is in Strasbourg and I’m in Madagascar, but we quickly found an easy way to exchange ideas on our subject. We met again soon after, in March 2024 in Madagascar, and then in March 2026 in Leiden, in the Netherlands.
VB: How is the part of the project you’re responsible for, the socio-anthropological study, going?
HP: We started setting up the qualitative survey protocol in March 2024, because we were able to work efficiently in the field. Mamy had many contacts with health professionals in the community health centres. He also has a truly remarkable sense of social ties and relationships, which made our work much easier. Thanks to the trust we had built, I was able to observe a great deal and ask him a lot of questions.
MR: WP3 is built around three main activities. The first is the exploratory study, which gathers people’s knowledge and perceptions of malaria before the clinical component starts, so that it can inform that work. It ended in September 2024 and identified what information and communication the population needs. The second is the KAP (knowledge, attitudes and practices) study, carried out at the project’s midpoint. It gives us a baseline for adapting how the clinical component is rolled out, if needed. Finally, the transfer of skills to local institutions and leaders is planned for the end of the project.
VB: A final word on the project as a whole?
HP: I’d say the project works well because of the idea of connecting the different WPs to one another. Exploring the knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of local people has to interact with the clinical component. That means patients as well as health professionals and community health workers. Each side should feed into the other, with help from the communication activities too. All of this leads to the same goal: the final advocacy work to allow primaquine to be implemented. The idea behind the project, as EDCTP3 designed it and as is now widely documented, is that a health intervention with a new drug can’t succeed without the support of the people it’s meant for. Engaging in dialogue, exchanging views, and aligning everyone’s interests around the fight against malaria, all in both directions, is essential.
Interview by Valérie Bisson at Leiden University, 13 March 2026.