For quite a while now, I've been trying to figure out how best to talk about Health and South Asians, two topics that seem to have taken over my mind and heart for the last several years, with as many people as possible. And then a friend suggested the most obvious answer for this century: blog about it! And here we are. With a not-so-creative title (which hopefully will change when I feel more creative juices flowing) but hopefully a space with interesting and provocative ideas which will make some of you want to engage and work with me, or at least work with South Asian communities to fight for better health and health care access!
To give you all a sense of where *I* happen to stand, let me share with you a quote that I happened to come across today, printed in a peer-reviewed medical journal: "Patients of South Asian ethnic background...present a special management challenge...health care delivery in this population is more challenging because of the cultural, communication, and comprehension difficulties...along with social deprivation..."
Now whether or not doctors find it 'challenging' to treat South Asian patients, its the very tone of this quote that strikes me as problematic. That the patients are presenting a challenge. As far as I'm concerned, the real challenging thing is the health care system, not the individuals who come seeking services from it. I'd say that rather than health care delivery being challenging, its health care access that's the real challenging thing. Yes, there are "cultural", and communication barriers, the onus of which should lie on the system to address and fix, not the patient.
I say all this because I'm trying to see seeking health services from the point of view of the seeker rather than the provider. And maybe that's because I'm not a health care provider. Hopefully, however, my views on this give you an insight into what I hope this blog to be about -- a space to discuss how to empower our South Asian communities to demand better health care, access available services, and push for more rights from the systems that we should be able to depend upon to serve us!
