Essay On Medical Pluralism

Medical pluralism is defined as the utilization of more than one medical system or the use of both conventional medicine and CAM for health and illness (cf. Wade et al. 2008). Study conducted medical questionnaires reported medical pluralism in diabetes mellitus are still limited. However, the recent patterns of MP and associated factors in diabetes mellitus treatment particularly in Indonesia need to be investigated more closely.

Although the prevalence is high, there is no enough information available regarding treatment seeking behavior in West Java. The health-care seeking behavior is still limited to the traditional view of health (i.e., visits to health-care institutions and health care practitioners; bought medication themselves instead of spending the time to attend specialist diabetes clinic). For many urban residents general practitioners are their first contact point, they usually visit primary healthcare service, but for rural residents it is the norm for them to go visit a midwife, who is a primary health-care giver in most rural areas, or a traditional medical practitioner depending on the type of

People with a higher socioeconomic status (SES) were more likely to use conventional / modern medicine than those with a low SES. In the study conducted by Shih et al. (2010), it is found that people living in highly urbanized areas had a higher average of adopting medical pluralism. Generally speaking, urbanisation is positively correlated with the density of medical services. People living in highly urbanised areas had more opportunities to access various conventional or non-conventional therapies. Moreover, people living in areas with a low degree of urbanization also tended to have limited access to medical services. Previous studies conducted by Chang et al. (2008) have found that high levels of urbanization are associated with a higher volume of medical use in