Where There Is No Doctor
Where There Is No Doctor: A village health care handbook (German: "Where there is no doctor: A handbook for village health care") is a very widespread tropical medicine handbook for the treatment of patients in developing countries where medical help is not available or is poorly available is. It goes back to the biologist David Werner , who recognized the need for such a manual in the course of his "Project Piaxtla" in western Mexico . It was first printed in Spanish in 1973 under the title Donde no hay doctor . Since then it has been revised several times, sold over a million copies and translated into over a hundred languages.
Purpose and content
While medical help is readily available in western countries (USA: 2.4 doctors per 1000 inhabitants, Germany 3.75, Switzerland 4.0), in developing countries like Rwanda and Senegal there is only one doctor for every ten thousand inhabitants, whereby the number of doctors per capita is likely to be even lower in Sierra Leone and Liberia , for example . Since the people in such areas are on their own with many medical problems anyway, Where There Is No Doctor tries to make the village community itself medically competent helpers. For this purpose, the book largely dispenses with medical terms. Secondly, the book is aimed at the employees of aid organizations in the field of development and disaster relief as well as adventure travelers.
The book covers all aspects of medicine - from cancer to broken bones to annelid worms , from malaria to vaccinations to hygiene and the use of medicines. The manual also explains in which cases external help is necessary, be it from an official health worker or a doctor.
Free availability and extensions
Where There Is No Doctor is available as a book or CD. The publisher, the Hesperian Health Guides Foundation , also opened a website where 26 different language versions of the book can be downloaded. The illustrations are also freely available so that health authorities can design posters and flyers based on Where There Is No Doctor to inform the population about health issues.
A full revision is underway to cover newer third world health problems such as AIDS , cancer , drug addiction , family planning and mental health . The same publisher has also published other books for the same purpose as Where There Is No Doctor , for example on helping blind children or gynecology.
expenditure
As described above, there are over 100 different translations of the book, of which more than two dozen can be downloaded from the publisher's website. A complete revision of the book is in progress. Some chapters of this new version can already be viewed.
- David Werner, Carole Thuman, Jane Maxwell: Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Health Care handbook . 13th, revised version, 2nd edition. 2013, ISBN 978-0-942364-15-6 .
- David Werner, Christian Jack (Appendix): Where there is no doctor: Medical health manual for help and self-help when traveling . 11th edition. Reise Know-How Verlag, Bielefeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-8317-1019-5 (Original title: Where There Is No Doctor .).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ World Bank: Information on doctors per capita http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS (accessed on October 22, 2014)