The Importance Of Medical Anthropology

Based on Ramon del Fierro and Fiscalina Nolasco’s review, Anthropologist view human as both biological and cultural creatures and are currently involved in applying anthropology, a sub-discipline of anthropology, is concerned with human health in various environmental and cultural contexts. The concept of culture is essential because belief systems, cultural practices and other complex networks of variables account for actual behaviors. Because every medical system is a cultural system and medical knowledge is available to all members of a cultural group, it is crucial to give cultural importance to the insiders perspective. What people know, believe and do in determining the categories through which people create meanings in their lives, medical anthropologists employ comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to better understand people’s own system, in this case, their own folk medicine. They document a wide range of human survival strategies and the consequences of these on health and human welfare because people perceive symptoms and illnesses in many different ways, medical anthropologists try to understand people’s decision about whether to treat an illness at home, consult a traditional healer or seek biochemical care. Ethnomedicine, a sub-field of medical anthropology, deals with the study of traditional medicine and the variant medicine subcultures found in various communities. Ethnomedicine refers to health beliefs and practices which are a result of indigenous