IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v55y2002i7p1143-1156.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Concepts of iron deficiency anemia and public health measures in rural Costa Rica

Author

Listed:
  • Jefferds, Mariaelena D.

Abstract

In rural Costa Rica, lay people conceptualize iron deficiency anemia differently from health care providers, and these differences impede public health initiatives. This research is based on 70 ethnographic interviews with mothers of young children 24-48 months of age and interviews with health care personnel in eight rural neighborhoods. Lay explanations of anemia draw on biomedical concepts, such as the amount of iron in the blood or in food, but one common explanation is elaborated to involve a biomedical life-threatening disease, leukemia, in cases where the anemia is not treated. Furthermore, mothers often view the liquid iron given free at the clinic as treatment for anemia as too strong, causing negative dental effects; many refuse to administer the iron drops to their children and give other treatments. Formal public health measures result in effects local people consider unacceptable and not congruent with being a good parent; with few exceptions, the medical community dismisses those preoccupations as inappropriate signs of ignorance on the part of caretakers. The existence of several systems of healing allows for parental rejection of public health measures and easy access to alternative remedies.

Suggested Citation

  • Jefferds, Mariaelena D., 2002. "Concepts of iron deficiency anemia and public health measures in rural Costa Rica," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 1143-1156, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:55:y:2002:i:7:p:1143-1156
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(01)00254-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. World Bank, 2006. "Timor-Leste Health Sector Review : Meeting Challenges and Improving Health Outcomes," World Bank Publications - Reports 14897, The World Bank Group.
    2. Stein, Alexander J. & Meenakshi, J.V. & Qaim, Matin & Nestel, Penelope & Sachdev, H.P.S. & Bhutta, Zulfiqar A., 2008. "Potential impacts of iron biofortification in India," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1797-1808, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:55:y:2002:i:7:p:1143-1156. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.