Healing For The Nations An Alternative Healthcare Model

100 Years of Christian Medical College, Vellore

Based on careful analysis of burden of disease and the costs ofinterventions, this second edition of 'Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, 2nd edition' highlights achievable priorities; measures progresstoward providing efficient, equitable care; promotes cost-effectiveinterventions to targeted populations; and encourages integrated effortsto optimize health. Nearly 500 experts - scientists, epidemiologists, health economists,academicians, and public health practitioners - from around the worldcontributed to the data sources and methodologies, and identifiedchallenges and priorities, resulting in this integrated, comprehensivereference volume on the state of health in developing countries.

This book engages topical and problematic issues regarding the impacts of cultural change on traditional healing beliefs and practices in both developing and developed nations. It describes issues ranging from the attrition of cultural heritage knowledge, or traditional knowledge (TK), to the implications of unconventional modern and traditional healing in various guises encountered during projects that entailed research fieldwork in communities of Australia, Africa and within institutions of mainstream healthcare in the United States. Furthermore, it explores philosophical aspects of contemporary complementary medicine practices. This book has pertinence for many practitioners and consumers of traditional non-medical forms of health practices, and relevance for the theoretical body of understanding related to these diverse fields. In particular, the individual chapters describe topics important to indigenous persons, people living in rural areas, those with mental illnesses, practitioners of Chinese medicine and massage therapy, practitioners and consumers of traditional Western herbal medicine, social theorists interested in unconventional health domains, and US veterans seeking adjunctive wellbeing care and advice alongside medical treatment, It also provides a chapter with information dedicated to their medical and complementary wellbeing providers. In the contemporary context, for Western countries such as US, UK and Australia, non-biomedical treatments are generally grouped together under the common term Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), or more recently Complementary and Integrative Healthcare (CIH). In developing countries such as Africa, and in relation to indigenous healing (for instance, in many communities in remote Australia where there is a concentrated population of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people), heritage healing practices and unconventional approaches to healthcare, including spiritually-focused and specific cultural approaches to managing diseases, may instead be termed traditional healing. Much health research today is geared towards securing quantitative outcomes that fortify the significant gains advanced by biomedicine in treating disease. However, the global spread of biomedical practices and ways of conceptualising health unfortunately follows in the footsteps of centuries of Western social and economic global colonisation, and thereby represents a current ongoing process of deep colonisation. The cultural shift brought about by this process has wrought deep and lasting changes in the body of heritage practices and beliefs that belong to culturally-situated healing traditions, and in the retention of TK associated with such healing. This book presents several chapters of anthropological and qualitative research, which contribute to literature describing this process of cultural change and its impacts. It offers suggestions and commentary regarding the value of CAM and traditional healing to: 1) Promote wellbeing; 2) preserve traditional knowledge and medicinal plant species; 3) address specific health problems and the needs of population groups; and 4) extend a willingness to accept and incorporate essential CAM healthcare services, holistic beliefs and new understandings of well-being, alongside Western biomedicine.

We are at the crossroads of world health. On the one hand we face the possibility of a world wide pandemic, the likes of which has never been seen before. We are, likewise on the threshold of discovering natural cures for nearly every disease. As choosing wisely may mean the difference between life and death, this book is designed to help the reader choose alternative options that are seldom if ever in the news. Jared Diamond, in his groundbreaking work, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, addresses the fact that only civilizations that recognize the threats against their existence, and deal with the threat effectively survive. Civilizations with their heads in the sand become extinct or are conquered by more vigorous nations. The robber barons of the last century were able to create a monopoly for oil and the automobile by ruthlessly and systematically destroying all competition. They tore up cable car lines and public transportation so the public would have no other alternative except their oil. Today, the drug monopolies, owned by the descendants of these same robber barons, are nearly complete in their plot to eradicate all natural, low cost remedies for disease prevention and treatment. In the state of Florida, naturopathic physicians were de-licensed unless they also had a conventional medical license. The powers that be want to create a drug induced society, at an enormous financial and emotional cost to the public at large. They are even trying to outlaw vitamins via European health treaties and side step the American constitution and the public. The ever escalating cost of medical care created by lack of natural alternative options can only lead to the eventual total collapse of the entire medical system. It is exceedingly difficult finding the truth about alternative medicine as the system has a vested interest in making profits and keeping the truth from you. A few thousand deaths is an acceptable loss if a few billion dollars can be made. And it will be a cold day in hell before a drug company puts itself out of business by telling you about a low cost natural cure that their product can manage. The guardians of public health know which side their toast is buttered on also. The career politicians and beltway bandits at the FDA know where the money is and they dont get it from you or providers of natural cures. The drug monopolies pay the big bucks. There have been no checks and balances. Corruption has become so pronounced that the US House of Representatives is seeking to pass the Consumers Access to Health Information Act (H.R. 2352) to ensure that accurate health claims ARE NOT SUPPRESSED. Consumers would be given TRUTHFUL AND COMPLETE information about the curative, mitigation, treatment, and prevention effects of foods and dietary supplements on disease or health-related conditions. The time to exercise your God given right to the health care of your choice is now. (www.lef.org) America has the finest emergency health care in the world. Bar none. However that is not the nature of the coming threat. American baby boomers will soon be retiring in the tens of millions. Their health care needs will be staggering and costly. However 92% of American health care providers are trained in emergency medicine and only 8% in long term preventative medicine. As it takes a minimum of 6-7 years to obtain a medical degree, America is unprepared for a crisis that is inevitable.

Aboriginal peoples in Canada have diverse cultures but share common social and political challenges that have contributed to their experiences of health and illness. This collection addresses the origins of mental health and social problems and the emergence of culturally responsive approaches to services and health promotion. Healing Traditions is not a handbook of practice but a resource for thinking critically about current issues in the mental health of indigenous peoples. Cross-cutting themes include: the impact of colonialism, sedentarization, and forced assimilation; the importance of land for indigenous identity and an ecocentric self; and processes of healing and spirituality as sources of resilience.

This report is structured in five parts: national framework for traditional and complementary medicine (T&CM); product regulation; practices and practitioners; the challenges faced by countries; and finally the country profiles. Apart from the section on practices and practitioners the report is consistent with the format of the report of the first global survey in order to provide a useful comparison. The section on practices and practitioners which covers providers education and health insurance is a new section incorporated to reflect the emerging trends in T&CM and to gather new information regarding these topics at a national level. All new information received has been incorporated into individual country profiles and data graphs. The report captures the three phases of progress made by Member States; that is before and after the first WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy (1999?2005) from the first global survey to the second global survey (2005?2012) and from the second survey to the most recent timeline (2012?2018).