The institutionalization of public hygiene in Korea, 1876-1910.
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On the whole, the major impetus for the institutionalization of public hygiene in Korea came from two directions. On one hand, the self-enlightened intellectuals had introduced a variety of Western ideas and theories on public hygiene since the mid-eighteenth century. On the other hand, Japan strongly influenced the modern systems of Korean health care and medical education, especially through Japanese efforts at the sanitary control of infectious diseses such as smallpox and cholera. The institutionalization of Korea's public hygiene in this period corresponded not to the high ideas of the progressive intellectuals but to the larger social and institutional changes caused by the major political events. Ideas of public hygiene were institutionalized as a powerful strategy of linking the imperial capital and colonial domains. (+info)
Reconceptualizing native women's health: an "indigenist" stress-coping model.
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This commentary presents an "indigenist" model of Native women's health, a stress-coping paradigm that situates Native women's health within the larger context of their status as a colonized people. The model is grounded in empirical evidence that traumas such as the "soul wound" of historical and contemporary discrimination among Native women influence health and mental health outcomes. The preliminary model also incorporates cultural resilience, including as moderators identity, enculturation, spiritual coping, and traditional healing practices. Current epidemiological data on Native women's general health and mental health are reconsidered within the framework of this model. (+info)
Health sector reform in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT): targeting the forest or the trees?
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Since the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, reform activities have targeted various spheres, including the health sector. Several international aid and UN organizations have been involved, as well as local and international non-governmental organizations, with considerable financial and technical investments. Although important achievements have been made, it is not evident that the quality of care has improved or that the most pressing health needs have been addressed, even before the second Palestinian Uprising that began in September 2000. The crisis of the Israeli re-invasion of Palestinian-controlled towns and villages since April 2002 and the attendant collapse of state structures and services have raised the problems to critical levels. This paper attempts to analyze some of the obstacles that have faced reform efforts. In our assessment, those include: ongoing conflict, frail Palestinian quasi-state structures and institutions, multiple and at times inappropriate donor policies and practices in the health sector, and a policy vacuum characterized by the absence of internal Palestinian debate on the type and direction of reform the country needs to take. In the face of all these considerations, it is important that reform efforts be flexible and consider realistically the political and economic contexts of the health system, rather than focus on mere narrow technical, managerial and financial solutions imported from the outside. (+info)
Latin American social medicine and global social medicine.
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A fundamental change in the theory underlying public health and medicine is needed. Latin American social medicine (LASM), originating in a region of the world that has been subjected to colonial and postcolonial influence, will be part of this change. To the extent that the social production of disease among people in other regions is a consequence of various large-scale forms of domination, LASM offers a relevant analysis, models of resistance, and exemplars of social medicine in practice. I draw upon LASM to examine the social production of disease in the Marshall Islands and Iraq. I suggest a basis for a global social medicine in the shared experience of suffering and describe implications for public health theory and practice. (+info)
Elihu Yale and the medicine he promoted: the government general hospital and Madras Medical College, India.
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Much has been written about the philanthropist Elihu Yale and his life in the Americas and England, where he spent his beginnings and end. Less publicized is his life in India, where he spent the majority of his adult life and where he raised his family. A major contribution of Elihu Yale to medicine in India was his promotion of a local hospital in the major Indian trading port city of Madras. This essay briefly describes the history of that hospital and the medical college that grew out of it. (+info)
Spirituality among Latinas/os: implications of culture in conceptualization and measurement.
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Despite growing transnational migration between the United States and Latin American countries, culturally relevant conceptualizations of spirituality among Latinas/os remain lacking in healthcare research. Grounded in Latina feminist theology, this article elucidates cultural values that influence spirituality and describes findings from a study using a new questionnaire to explore spirituality among Latinas in Puerto Rico and the US mainland. Results support the saliency of cultural values such as personalismo and familismo as the context for spiritual perspectives, which may function independently of the Catholic Church structure. (+info)
"Neither of meate nor drinke, but what the Doctor alloweth": medicine amidst war and commerce in eighteenth-century Madras.
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Madras in the eighteenth century was a site of continuous warfare sparked mostly by trading interests. This paper studies how these influences of hostility and commerce shaped the medical establishment of the English East India Company. It begins by analyzing the struggle of the medical establishment to cope with military and logistical requirements; it then shows how the Coromandel trade provided a peculiar dynamic to the practice of medicine in Madras. By aligning the history of medicine with that of trade, the paper traces the parallel trajectories of intellectual and material wealth. The development of modern medicine is seen as a process of adjusting to and engaging with diverse ideas and items--sometimes co-opting them, sometimes realigning them in new modes of production. (+info)
Blood transfusions in the early years of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Blood transfusions transmit HIV more effectively than other means, yet there has been little examination of their role in the origins and early course of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. We review historical data in archives, government reports, and medical literature from African and European sources documenting the introduction, establishment, use, and growth of blood transfusions in sub-Saharan Africa. These data allow estimation of the geographic diffusion and growth of blood transfusions between 1940 and 1990. By 1955, 19 African colonies and countries reported transfusion programs-with national rates of 718 to 1372 per 100 000 by 1964, and urban rates similar to those in developed countries. We estimated 1 million transfusions per year in sub-Saharan Africa by 1970 and 2 million per year by the 1980s, indicating that transfusions were widely used throughout sub-Saharan Africa during the crucial period of 1950-1970, when all epidemic strains of HIV first emerged in this region. (+info)