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Modern medicine has penetrated Bedouin tribes in the course of rapid urbanization and education, but when serious illnesses strike, particularly in the case of incurable diseases, even educated people turn to traditional medicine for a remedy. Over the course of 30 years, the author gathered data on traditional Bedouin medicine among pastoral-nomadic, semi-nomadic, and settled tribes. Based on interviews with healers, clients, and other active participants in treatments, this book will contribute to renewed thinking about a synthesis between traditional and modern medicine — to their reciprocal enrichment.

Background Achieving changing needs, advancing knowledge, and innovations in higher education require the constant changes of medical school curricula and successfully applying the new reforms requires some modifications in the medical educators’ core beliefs. The purpose of this study was to describe the medical educators’ beliefs about the alignment of the learning goals with teaching and assessment processes in the context of the curriculum changes. Method A qualitative method was used to study the medical educators’ beliefs through selecting the faculty participants via a purposeful sampling strategy. The study was conducted at a Medical School in Iran. For the individual interviews, we invited both the professors of the basic sciences and the clinical professors who had thought medical students for at least 5 years. Ten educators were interviewed. Result The results of the research showed that, in the professors’ viewpoints, the development of competencies in the students has been abandoned and this is due to the priority of treatment to education in the clinical courses and the limited learning experiences. Moreover, the gap between the content and the context and the attendance of the students in the hospitals instead of the clinics to pass their internship courses has reduced the provision of authentic learning experiences. These conditions have affected the quality of education negatively. The non-systematic assessment has also worsened the situation. Conclusion Despite the changes in the curriculum, the compartmentalization of the curriculum and the structure of the medical education have caused the professors’ beliefs to be in line with the past perspectives. Some modifications in the structure of the curriculum seem to be necessary.

\"[I]t is extremely salubrious to see the ways Islam works in the lives of ordinary people who are not politicized in their religious lives... No other book on South Asia has material like this.\" -Ann Grodzins Gold In Amma's Healing Room is a compelling study of the life and thought of a female Muslim spiritual healer in Hyderabad, South India. Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger describes Amma's practice as a form of vernacular Islam arising in a particular locality, one in which the boundaries between Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity are fluid. In the \"healing room,\" Amma meets a diverse clientele that includes men and women, Muslim, Hindu, and Christian, of varied social backgrounds, who bring a wide range of physical, social, and psychological afflictions. Flueckiger collaborated closely with Amma and relates to her at different moments as daughter, disciple, and researcher. The result is a work of insight and compassion that challenges widely held views of religion and gender in India and reveals the creativity of a tradition often portrayed by Muslims and non-Muslims alike as singular and monolithic.

Debates over the efficacy of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are highly polarized and have received much publicity of late. While 'believers' in CAM campaign for its integration into the NHS, 'sceptics' call for the withdrawal of any public funding for such services. These debates take place in the context of a steady rise in CAM usage both in the UK and abroad. Critics of CAM often point to the lack of scientific evidence demonstrating its efficacy. The lack of evidence gathered by means of randomized controlled trials is often used to make the claim that CAM is no more effective than placebo. This article examines some of the debates surrounding the use of evidence-based medicine to assess the efficacy of CAM. It also explores a number of issues pertaining to CAM and the placebo response including the moral questions surrounding the knowing use of placebo as therapy. The rest of the article presents material from a qualitative study carried out in northern England on the understandings of CAM efficacy. The material shows that CAM therapists and patients do not reflect the polarities evident in the public debate in their own understanding and usage of CAM. Rather they are pragmatic pluralists with clear ideas about when CAM treatment is appropriate and often have sophisticated insights into the placebo response. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of these findings for future work in the growing field of CAM research.

Immunisation programmes currently represent a firm and widely accepted part of preventive medicine. The Czech Republic ranks among countries with a mandatory immunisation schedule strongly regulated by the state. Having one's child vaccinated is an unquestionable norm, supported by formal sanctions for those who do not take part in this practice. This article focuses on parents who challenge this norm by deciding to refuse to allow their child to be vaccinated. Twenty-two parents whose children were not vaccinated were interviewed and several participant observations were conducted at public lectures on immunisation and at meetings of parents who actively take part in the debates against compulsory vaccination. The article analyses groups in the Czech Republic that are critical of vaccines in the context of the crisis of trust in biomedical knowledge. It identifies key factors affecting parents' critical views of vaccination and highlights their previous experience with health authorities and the feeling of a loss of faith in the trustworthiness of biomedicine as the key motives influencing their decision to refuse vaccination. The decision to vaccinate is analysed as a part of the process of the `will to health' that occurs in the context of an ongoing negotiation between different notions of risk. Reprinted by permission of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

In France, vaccination coverage is insufficient. Since general practitioners (GPs) are key players in vaccination policy, it is useful to know their views and practices in this regard. A total of 1431 French GPs were interviewed; 98% were in favor of vaccination in their daily practice. Their vaccination coverage was 73% for hepatitis B, 64% for whooping cough and 77% for seasonal influenza. The doctors were very effective in obtaining adherence for MMR in children less than 2 years and seasonal influenza in adults under 65 years at risk, but much less for hepatitis B among adolescents. The establishment of a national computerized registry of immunization and the transmission of vaccine promotion messages according to vaccine type seem to be the two main ways to improve vaccination coverage. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT] Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd

As healthcare systems around the world are facing increasing physician shortages, more physicians are migrating from low to high income countries. Differences in medical education and international interaction may have significant effect on physician flows. The Chinese Medical Graduates (CMGs) in the US present an interesting case to examine this effect. This paper evaluated the current number and historical trends of CMGs in the US from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong comparing their differences and similarities in terms of demographic and geographic characteristics. Since 2000, the number of CMGs in the US showed a consistent upward trend at a rate of approximately 206 additional graduates per year. In 2010, there were 8,797 CMGs in the US. Compared to CMGs from mainland China, CMGs from Taiwan and Hong Kong were much older. Much larger proportion of Taiwan and Hong Kong CMGs were male. However, they were more likely to practice in solo settings than mainland CMGs. The vast majority of CMGs are concentrated in urban areas and no significant differences were found for their distributions in underserved areas. However, a larger proportion of Taiwan and Hong Kong CMGs were in western coastal states; whereas a larger proportion of mainland CMGs were located in eastern coastal states. Fluctuations in CMG numbers in the US reflect the significant differences within the medical education systems among the three. The seemingly homogenous CMGs in the US do show significant differences. Given the magnitude and historical trends of migration of CMGs to the US, further exploration of its causes and impact is needed.

In this paper, uncertainty has been measured in the form of fuzziness which arises due to imprecise boundaries of fuzzy sets. Uncertainty caused due to human’s cognition can be decreased by the use of fuzzy soft sets. There are different approaches to deal with the measurement of uncertainty. The method we proposed uses fuzzified evidence theory to calculate total degree of fuzziness of the parameters. It consists of mainly four parts. The first part is to measure uncertainties of parameters using fuzzy soft sets and then to modulate the uncertainties calculated. Afterward, the appropriate basic probability assignments with respect to each parameter are produced. In the last, we use Dempster’s rule of combination to fuse independent parameters into integrated one. To validate the proposed method, we perform an experiment and compare our outputs with grey relational analysis method. Also, a medical diagnosis application in reference to COVID-19 has been given to show the effectiveness of advanced method by comparing with other method.

Despite continuing investigations of the efficacy of Canadian addiction treatment services and supports across a range of health care settings and socio-cultural groups, many systemic, geographic and ideological barriers to service provision for women still exist. Determining how current services and supports can become more congruent with women's gender-specific needs is a current research focus. Drawing on Butler's reformulation of Althusser's interpellation, this article explores the power of hailing, where hailing power lies, and how hailing operates in discourses about addiction that appear in women's talk of their encounters with addiction services and supports. The article briefly outlines Butler's understanding of interpellation and examines ways by which gender operates as both condition and effect in women becoming addicts. I argue that women's narratives reveal patterns of interaction that intersect and generate complex social meanings and identities, and serve to get women's attention in terms of seeing themselves as addicts. Further, I argue that powerful competing discourses concerning gender and the medicalization of addiction, hailed through these interactions, are taken up as lived realities by some women and resisted by others. Knowing how women are hailed to take up as their own, or resist, aspects of traditional and gendered discourses within addiction treatment and recovery communities can inform gender-compassionate service provision.