HEALTH ISSUES

Health Issues



Health Issues

Introduction

Health care provisions guarantee the well being of any society. They are the provisions that, if not availed, can lead to dire consequences of health related issues on the individual as well as on the society on macroeconomic levels. In those societies where health care facilities are conveniently accessible to the ordinary men, prosperity and harmony reigns supreme. This assignment aims to review an aspect of a health issue that critically appraises the sociological and anthropological perspectives that aid towards the understanding of health and illness concepts. Medical sociology has focused its attention towards the social, structural factors and an exploration of lay illness at a micro level. We will link these levels of understanding to provide a holistic understanding of medical sociology including aspects like unhealthy lifestyles, social construction of health and illness, feminist, critical social, functionalist and phenomenological perspectives on the health issue and other social models.

For this reason, we have selected the issue of the spread of HIV or AIDS in modern societies to an alarming extent. We will go about the study studying different aspects of this issue and will focus towards the anthropological and sociological perspectives on HIV spread and treatments available for it.

Sociological Perspective on Health

Sociology assumes the fact that a well-fed and functional society depends on the treatment of diseases and preventive measures against illness. In examining the sociological perspective of health and social care, the views of the distinguished sociologist Talcott Parsons provide mandatory guideline on the subject. He defined the scope of the role of a “sick person” in society. He called this concept “the sick role”. It states that a sick person:

Is not to be held responsible for his sickness.

Is not responsible to conduct a normal life activity

Is not supposed to like his state of illness

Requires help to attain health and get rid of this role.

Society believes that a sick person should be allowed and enabled to seek treatment for maintaining a healthy, normal life. The society looses sympathy towards the people who do not seek treatment against their illnesses. Hence, family and friends may show sympathy for a while, but lose patience with the victim and assume he or she is seeking attention or is a hypochondriac.

Anthropological Perspective on Health

Medical anthropological studies have emphasized upon cultural fabrics that coherently links the metaphors and means of health care together. There are many cosmic and ethical considerations that define the state of sickness and relate it to the health care provisions in anthropological realms. Anthropologists have always been interested to find out the social roots of the implications of health and illness; also their cultural representations. Anthropology also suggests that while biomedicine has treated health care as a separate domain of its own; it is not separable form economic, political and social aspects. It has explored that incidents like wars, homicides, rape, and political persecution have been responsible behind the diseases that have struck the world in recent ...