During this week’s lecture we learned that
one of the most well-known influences to global health is migration. Anthropological
research studies have shown that immigrant health can be devastated not only by
their political and economic status but also their social status as well. After
hearing the story Dr. Ceron told about the dilemma he faced when trying to
vaccinate the children because he was a “bearded dangerous” man, made me
realize the lack of communication we have from culture to culture and
specifically how dangerous that is to immigrant health. Dr. Ceron’s story gave
me an instant connection to the book, The
Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. The book covers the
journey of two parents from the Hmong culture who believe in traditional medicine and their struggle to understand
Western medicine for their epileptic daughter Lia Lee. In the World Health
Statistics report it discusses the needs of healthcare coverage and services.
As more and more people are migrating from
around the world and the cost of health coverage steeply increasing many states
are cutting back services like interpreters and social workers who work with relocated
individuals. The lack of funding to better bridge immigrant patients with their
doctors poses a substantial health risk. In the book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, it shows how the collision
between traditional medicine and Western medicine emerges from language
barriers. Lia’s parents migrated from Laos as refugees of the communist war.
Lia from a young age suffered from seizure attacks. When her parent’s first
took her to the doctor they were instructed on the types of medication/ dosages
to give her through sign language. Unaware of the process of Western medicine,
Lia’s parents failed to adequately provide her with the medication and failed
to bring her to check ups. The doctors then tried to take matters into their
own hands by placing Lia in foster care. After they received Lia back they
insisted to the doctors their medicine was making Lia sicker. Later doctors
realized that the medicine was indeed making her sick, Lia turned to a
vegetative state eating from feeding tubes in which the doctors told her
parents she would die immediately. Lia’s mom ripped her out of the hospital took
her home and used cultural herbs to scrub her body, mouth fed Lia and to the
doctors surprise Lia lived way longer than predicted.
Lia’s story shows how miscommunication
between doctors and immigrant patients can ultimately lead to death. I
personally believe that both the doctors and parents failed Lia. The parents
failed to provide Lia with the right dosages in the beginning and the doctors
failed to understand the Hmong culture in order to educate the parents. Even
though her mother was right about the medicine making her sick and using her
cultural techniques to keep Lia breathing after doctors said she’d die
instantly, does not mean using strictly cultural healing is the best and vice
versa for the medicine. In my opinion I don’t believe that we must choose in
between. I believe grasping a deeper understanding in (this case) the Hmong
culture could have provided both sides of an explanation in which they could
have worked together to better provide for Lia. After all, it wasn’t the type
of health method that failed Lia it was the miscommunication between two
totally separate cultures.
One of the reasons why I find this book so
fascinating is because I feel like I can understand (at times) where Lia’s
parents were coming from. Growing up with parents who migrated from war just
like Lia’s, I barely remember going to the doctors as a child. I went for
immunizations/checkups/etc. but, when it came to instances where I was sick my
mom always had natural remedies that worked. Now I barely ever get sick, I don’t
even ever remember taking an aspirin or even ibuprofen in my life. However,
with such a severe case like Lia’s it is so important to understand both the
cultural and medicinal component in order to treat her. It makes sense why her
parents would take that route; I mean how do you blame someone for doing
something they only know how to do?
This story relates to Dr. Ceron’s encounter
with the village children because of cross cultural differences. As Dr. Ceron
stated in lecture he thought of his beard as a more fashionable statement
however, the children identified him as a kidnapper and ran away from him. The
cultural stories past along from generations frightened the children. This
simple misunderstanding of a beard could have prevented the children from
receiving the vaccinations. It shows how important it is to understand different
cultures and being able to break the language barrier to learn more about them.
Doing this could provide immigrants with better care to prevent tragedies like
Lia’s.
The cartoon below reinforces the idea that there
must be more work done to make sure immigrants and physicians are on the same
page. In the picture, it says she believes that they aren’t receiving the care
that they deserve due to a language barrier. This relates to Lia’s case because
they share the same problem, not being able to understand the doctor.
In the World Health Statistics report it
states that, “Health service coverage indicators reflect the extent to which
people in need actually receive important health interventions. Such
interventions include reproductive services..vitamin A supplementation for
children..immunizations.” I believe we should also stress the services that
connect the vitamin to the person. As Dr. Ceron said in lecture you can spend
your whole life designing a Vitamin D pill however without understanding the
person and their culture/ surroundings it could be useless to them. For
example, the medicine instructed to give to Lia.
Lia’s story embodies how important it is to
be educated about cross cultural treatment. I believe anthropological work is essential
to connecting health and treatment on a more global level to overcome cultural/
language barriers that could limit immigrants to better health.
Sources:
Fadiman, Anne The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down New York : Farrar, Straus,
and Giroux, ©1997.
Global Health Watch 3: An Alternative World Health Report (2011)
I would like to comment on the specific social issue of miscommunication exemplified by both Lia’s story as well as Denden Embaye’s ending remarks about “how important it is to be educated about cross cultural treatment”. I feel that understanding cultural differences in societal approaches to medicine is more relevant than ever in our current state of increasingly rapid globalization and for Americans living in the ethnic “melting pot” of the world.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Embaye’s comment on the importance of recognizing and respecting cultural differences on the individual level. Especially for citizens of the United States, who experience one of the most ethnically and therefore culturally diverse societies worldwide, the consequences of a lack of understanding can be felt almost every day. As a first generation Asian American I was raised to have respect for both the country I was born in and the country that my ancestors are from; my parents were very adamant in having me hold a holistic view of the two worlds that shaped me with the hope that I would gain a greater understanding of the world I would shape as an adult. Based on personal experience, it’s benefitted me to be familiar with both cultures by conditioning me to be more open toward other cultural differences and find value in the lack of similarity. As cold as it sounds, I think that at first humans are more inclined to be critical and judgmental of what is “foreign” or unfamiliar and will avoid accepting other cultures out of defense of their own culture. However, as illustrated in the specific case of Lia’s medical crisis, the value of communication between cultures is just as important that of medicine. Without a mutual understanding of one, the other can’t be utilized to its full extent. Furthermore, I think that if there could be a melting together of domestic cultural techniques and Western biomedicine, it would lead to both parties benefitting from being open in communicating to each other. The amazingly flexible and most interesting aspect about culture is that although it carries the history of many generations and plays an essential part in shaping our lives, it can be taught. Culture isn’t coded into our genes or embedded in our minds; as much as it connects an individual to a specific group of people and affects the way we form opinions about our experiences, it doesn’t chain us down to one community. Culture is a means of communication, but ironically many have forgotten that education is one of the most powerful forms of communication humans are capable of. In conclusion, I want to relate this idea of educating ourselves about different cultures to a subject we discussed last week in lecture: the World Bank’s succession of the WHO in the 1970s-80s as the world’s main actor of global health. The World Bank was able to surpass the WHO due to more funding and by not only recognizing, but embracing and nurturing the growth of globalization. I imagine today’s societies are like the WHO and the World Bank, except on a smaller and more localized level. Only we can decide whether or not we end up as leaders by learning from our cultural differences or as followers of those who do.
What caught my eye about this blog post was because I can relate so much to it. I am Hmong American and my parents are from Laos. The point the blogger points out in sharing this story and relating it to our class is that like Professor Ceron said, social aspects like culture effect our health. Our health is not only due to medicine, doctors and science. Social aspects like culture are as important as all of those things and a lot of it is due to the fact that health care is increasing as well as the amount of immigrants in the United Sates. These aspects are the aspects that I will be addressing.
ReplyDeleteI definitely would have to agree with the blogger on this topic of the clash between culture and health. Like the blogger I come from the same background with immigrant parents and I see how both sides can affect health. I also know that miscommunication is very common in situations like this because of language barriers, religion, beliefs, and traditions that all play into the health of people. The lack of similarity and knowledge of the backgrounds of medicine versus a type culture really affect the likelihood understanding different methods to health care. Like this blogger I did do not remember going to the doctors as a child. The only time that any one of my siblings or I resorted to going to a family doctor was when the sickness was clearly very bad. On the flip side my family would have religious ceremonies for good luck and good health every year to keep good health for the in coming year. I believe that this does keep me healthy as the Lia’s mothers cultural methods kept her alive and well for the time being. But I do agree that when there is a very serious issue there definitely needs to be professional medical attention. Like the blogger said that the doctors had failed to educate Lia’s parents on the importance of medicine, I believe that now a days more immigrants that have been in the United States for a long time have been properly educated and are open to American medicine. For example my aunt has colon cancer and is seeing a doctor for chemotherapy, but she also regularly has cultural/spiritual healing ceremonies as well. This is an example that truly supports that that education of American medicine can help balance apprehension about it with their culture. We tend to forget how important education is. Without proper knowledge of one thing all people have to go off is the information that is convenient for them and what they have heard in which could be very false. My opinion on this could possibly be seen as biased because I come from an immigrant family. Just as we talked about in class that history creates us, we can’t change history. We can’t change what we grew up to know and believe. What is more important is the understanding of this fact because there are so many different ways and factors to healing that there needs to be a balance between all aspects of health.
The aspect of this blog that made me chose to comment is the language barrier between doctors and patients. In the post Embaye stated, “…the collision between traditional medicine and Western medicine emerges from language barriers.” I believe language barrier is a growing problem of modern health care due to increase in immigration around the globe and the improvement of transportation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Embaye said about how the language barriers creates dissonance between traditional medicine and Western medicine. Language barrier does not only create a distance between two different theories of medicines, it also creates distance between the doctors and patients. The reason why I could connect to this blog post so much was because I also witnessed the very language barrier that troubled both the doctor and the patient. For the past several summers that I visited Korea I volunteered at an International Health Services in a medical center, which is a department that helps foreigners who reside in Korea with health services. My job was to escort patients to their destination, and help them with setting up some appointments. Couple of years ago in one of the days that I was volunteering, I was unexpectedly given the job to translate for both the doctor and the patient because the doctor who was appointed could not speak English. I was frustrated when I had to take the responsibility because I didn’t know all the medical terms in Korean. However, even more frustrated than I was were the doctor and the patient because of the trouble with the communication even with all my effort. Eventually, the patient got to talk with a different doctor who was fluent in English. This experience had a big impact on my view of health care and language. I realized just simply understanding and respecting for each other’s culture was not enough. A common language between the physician and the patient was needed to get the message across. I also noticed this in the blog when Embaye mentioned in the story about Lia, who could not get adequate health care due to miscommunication between her parents and the doctors. The problem of language barrier is even more important in United States than anywhere else. Currently, there are many different languages used throughout U.S. than ever before. From this I realized the importance of language as a bridge between the doctors and patients to understand each other and eventually lead to better health for the patient. However, it’s probably not realistic to have every single doctor in the U.S. to speak multiple languages. That’s why having medical translators are so important to better health care, and bridging the relationship between the physicians and patients. As mentioned in the lectures, we all have different definitions of health and medicine because everyone goes through their own life experiences and are brought up in different cultures that shape the definition of health, and language is an important part of communication and culture. Like the post comments, I think breaking down the language barrier will decrease the collision between traditional medicine and Western medicine.