Decolonising Epistemic Injustice in Global Health

I critique of the use of “epistemic injustice” and “decolonisation” in global health. Fricker’s ethico-epistemic notion of epistemic injustice, which focuses on harms to knowers rather than the truth of claims, struggles to apply in empirical fields where error can have material health consequences. In global health, the usage tends to conflate moral recognition with epistemic warrant. It encourages the levelling of credibility across competing claims irrespective of evidence. I trace how decolonial and pluriversal rhetoric—drawing on Quijano, Grosfoguel, Mignolo, and Lugones—extends this conflation into ontological pluralism, dissolving truth into perspective while retaining universalist health ambitions. Through cases of spirit children, umbilical cord care, and snakebite treatment, I show how these frameworks can licence harmful practices and obscure structural analyses of power independent of coloniality. I conclude by sketching a modest alternative: epistemic humility, realist standards of evidence, and procedural justice in access to the means of inquiry.