Western pharmaceuticals are flooding the Third World. Injections,
capsules and tablets are available in city markets and village shops,
from 'traditional' practitioners and street vendors, as well as from
more orthodox sources like hospitals. Although many are aware of this
'pharmaceutical invasion', little has been written about how local
people perceive and use these products. This book is a first attempt to
remedy that situation. It presents studies of the ways Western medicines
are circulated and understood in the cities and rural areas of Africa,
Asia and Latin America. We feel that such a collection is long overdue
for two reasons. The first is a practical one: people dealing with
health problems in developing countries need information about local
situations and they need examples of methods they can use to examine the
particular contexts in which they are working. We hope that this book
will be useful for pharmacists, doctors, nurses, health planners, policy
makers and concerned citizens, who are interested in the realities of
drug use. Why do people want various kinds of medicine? How do they
evaluate and choose them and how do they obtain them? The second reason
for these studies of medicines is to fill a need in medical anthropology
as a field of study. Here we address our colleagues in anthropol- ogy,
medical sociology and related disciplines.