Public Health Information in Vietnam

Dear List,

I'm an anthropology masters student looking for information about and studies of public health information in Vietnam. I'm particularly interested in what information and advice Vietnamese authorities give people relating to pharmaceuticals, such as consulting someone with medical qualifications, getting a prescription, the risks of self-medication, antibiotic resistance, domestic and imported pharmaceuticals, and so on.

My thesis is on Vietnamese rural mothers' knowledge of medicine and official/state perceptions of lay knowledge about medicine. My fieldwork data (from a rural commune in Nghe An) shows an emphasis on the authority of professional and scientific knowledge about medicine. I would like to know to what extent official public health campaigns and discourses draw on notions of professional and scientific knowledge.

Thank you in advance.

Kind regards,

Hanne Elsnab

Have you checked out the book Familiar Medicine by David Craig?

It might be right up your alley.

Also, it might be worth looking at the Hanoi School of Public Health website to see if any of the professors or students there are working on similar issues.

I also know there are articles in various health related academic journals that deal with treatment seeking behaviors among different groups within Vietnam.

Good luck.

-Jon McIntyre

Dear Hanne and list,

Have you tried Enfance: Etat des lieux Vietnam (l'Harmattan 1998). As the title indicates the book is focused on children but it probably has something on the mothers and definitely on medicine and public health. If I remember correctly it was psychiatric medicine but there might be more.

Best,

Christina Firpo

Here's the citation to that French title; you can get it thru InterLibrary

Loan from your library (this from Univ of Calif - Irvine library):

Enfance, Etat des lieux : Vietnam au coeur de la francophonie / sous la

direction de Charlyne Vasseur-Fauconnet

Published Paris : L'Harmattan, c1998

LOCATION CALL NO. STATUS

Langson Library BF721 .E56 1998 NOT CHCKD OUT

Description 620 p. : ill. ; 23 cm

Subj-lcsh Child psychology -- Congresses

Child psychiatry -- Congresses

Child psychology -- Vietnam -- Congresses

Child psychiatry -- Vietnam -- Congresses

Other author Vasseur-Fauconnet, Charlyne

Note(s) Includes bibliographical references (p. 582-584)

ISBN 2738470335

Call # BF721 .E56 1998

Publisher site:

http://www.harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=livre&no=755

recto (cover photo):

http://www.harmattan.fr/catalogue/couv/2738470335r.jpg

verso (more on book):

http://www.harmattan.fr/catalogue/couv/2738470335v.jpg

It's listed in catalog as this title:

VIETNAM : ENFANCE ETAT DES LIEUX

Au coeur de la francophonie

Sous la direction de Charline Vasseur

GENERALITES, OUVRAGE DE SYNTHESE ASIE

Des professionnels de l'enfance, ont voulu montrer que la francophonie

n'etait pas seulement un lieu d'change et de debats economiques mais

qu'elle portait en elle des valeurs educatives, une approche commune des

problematiques de l'enfance. A Hanoi et Hochiminh ville, quatre cents

vietnamiens et quatre vingt francophones , tous professionnels de

l'enfance ont debattu de leurs experiences, de leurs difficultes dans le

travail aupres des enfants.

ISBN : 2-7384-7033-5 1998 620 pages

Prix editeur : 44 / 289 FF

Daniel C. Tsang