Medicine in the underdeveloped world
In line with this post (My Jungle Medical Kit) I wanted to pass this link regarding establishing expedient medical clinics in remote locations.
These resources come from the Hesperian Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to publishing healthcare related books and documents.
Go to their webpage and check out some of these titles:
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“Where There Is No Doctor”
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“Where There Is No Dentist”
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”A Book for Midwives”
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“Water for Life”
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“A Community Guide for Environmental Health”
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“Where Women Have No Doctor”
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“The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard”
There is even a section on resources for Cholera in Haiti. Beyond Haitian Creole, many of these resources are available in Urdu, Sindhi and Spanish.
And they are all FREE. 100%. You can buy paper copies of the books, but these can all be downloaded with ease.
Every document is high quality. In fact, I have used these with development workers I have helped equip. These are real world, real genuine content resources. Some of these are 500 page books on how to establish a medical clinics (et cetera) and train indigenous leadership with the skills necessary to replicate the model.
One of the features of these documents that impressed me (from the vantage point of a professional student of cultures) is that they are not books that ignore the differences in cultural practices around medicine and social attitudes toward the illness and healing process.
Considering that in Western medicine we view disease as a pathological category, illness as an individual category, and sickness as a social category, these books skillfully navigate the ways in which different societies interpret these cultural experiences.
Check it out, especially if you work/live somewhere that medical resources are limited.
