Sociology of Health Care Decision: Exploration at a Public Hospital Dispensing Traditional Medicine in Bangladesh

Abstract

Health and development of diseases have long been of interest to mankind. Genetic predisposition, social conditions, and other environmental factors influence health and disease. People through the ages have generally viewed health problems from the perspective of their own particular society and culture, and have responded to diseases in predictable ways. Studying the norm, value, belief, social structure, social action, functional integration, and life-style of people have provided insight into the organization of resource that interplay in coping with health problems. Optimum utilization of resource involves careful consideration and decision-making on the part of the sufferers and the persons responsible for ensuring resource allocation and distribution, and maintaining the rights and obligations of the society. In this study, emphasis has been placed where patients turn to the unani and ayurvedic systems of traditional medicine and the weight that is placed on the existing complex medical pluralism in Bangladesh.