General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Switzerland to recognise homeopathy as legitimate medicine [View all]COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)100 million people (or more) especially in rural India are sick and/or dying like flies do to a complete lack of ANY type of medical attention, coupled with a generational total ignorance of some of the basics of disease, i.e. germs exist, how certain diseases are transmitted, etc.
I once oversaw a Peace Corps Public Health program in rural India (Madras), where our nurse PC volunteers tried to work with villagers to improve their general health. They rapidly discovered that, for the villagers germs don't exist (I can't see them so they aren't there), there's no problem with the village well being 1 meter from the communal cesspit and even more remarkably, that there is no connection between having sex and getting pregnant ( you don't get pregnant every time you have sex!). Teaching Birth control mechanisms also failed - after teaching the village women in the use of condoms (demonstrating them placed on a broomstick), a follow up found that the women who had been so instructed were still getting pregnant at the same rate as before. Inquiries found that these women were following the demonstration to the letter- they put the condoms on their broomstick and then proceeded to have sex with hubby as usual.
The most shocking part (to me, at least) was that almost every child in these villages had Kwashiakor, a disease that only occurs when there is total avitaminosis, i.e.a complete and total lack of vitamins. It is readily seen in dark skinned people who have yellow hair and distended bellies. This while the village had huge Mango trees, with gigantic mangoes rotting on the ground. Village elders explained that (according to their religion) "Mangoes are 'hot' fruit and all 'hot' fruits are prohibited.