A companion to medical anthropology / edited by Merrill Singer, Pamela I. Erickson, César E. Abadía-Barrero.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Medical Anthropology is a "baby boomer" of sorts. It came into being alongside the unprecedented interest in the health and wellbeing of Third World peoples in the aftermath of WW II when the world was full of the hope and possibility that science, in this case biomedicine, could alleviate human suffering due to infectious disease and malnutrition, and then help eliminate or control many of the world's major health problems. Many anthropologists of that era worked with the international health community (WHO, USAID, UNICEF, etc.) to bring biomedicine to the world. The presumption guiding this effort was that shown the effectiveness of biomedicine and modern public health methods (e.g., the health value of boiling water before drinking it), while addressing contextual and cultural barriers to change, people would readily adopt new ways and the threat of many diseases would begin to diminish.