Salud e interculturalidad: Sugerencias para organizaciones de salud en contextos indígenas, a partir de una experiencia boliviana

Abstract

The author offers a number of suggestions and reflections after a fieldwork experience in Bolivia let him explore the merits that an intercultural approach applied to health care-related issues have for a better relationship between westernized physicians and their indigenous patients. Indigenous definitions of health and illness refer to concepts that are qualitatively very different from those used in Bio-medicine. Indigenous drugs are especially intended more for the recovery of the «human being» in his or her cultural context than for the cure of the sick organ on which the bio-medical doctor focuses. Issues such as gender, perception of the body, bodily fluids and nakedness are critical in this potentially conflictive environment. From Bolivia's intercultural experience one can draw some insights into the health care-related problems arising in Spain in connection with the growing immigrant population in the country.