Intercultural health: Proposals, actions and failures

Abstract

During the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s,various intercultural health proposals and actions emerged in most Latin American countries. These initiative saimed to integrate biomedicine with traditional medicine based on ‘parallel’ relationships, as opposed relationships based on exclusion, subordination and hegemony. These initiatives had two basic objectives:1) to contribute to the cultural rehabilitation of ethnic groups that made effective use of traditional medicine; and 2) to improve the quality of relationships between health professionals and indigenous patients. This paper analyzes the reasons for the limited impact and,in some cases, failure of such intercultural health initiatives.