Poor Health of Latin America and the Caribbean

Every society has a medical system in which they are able to diagnose and treat illnesses. There are three types of medical anthropology: Ethnomedicine, Biomedicine, and Critical Medical Anthropology. Ethnomedicine is culturally specific non western societies. This is practiced throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

The poor health of Latin America and the Caribbean directly correlates to the sub-standard living conditions which the majority of the population lives. Such conditions include limited access to or safe sanitation practices. For example 30 of the 33 Latin American countries have a higher male mortality rate than the United States. The highest being Haiti with 493 compared to the United States with 140. It should be noted that countries with a higher percentage of GDP used towards there health care have more physicians per household. The spread of diseases throughout Latin America and the Caribbean is a result of poverty and inequality, Latin America has big gaps in the social system. This is because under sub-standard living conditions, people have weakened immune systems which makes eases the spread of diseases.

Sanabria discusses in his book, The Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean that over half the population of Latin America is poor due to a high concentration of wealth in only 10% of households.

HIV/AIDS is the fastest spreading infectious disease in Latin America, only second in the world to sub-Sahara Africa. According the the CIA world fact book: There was a prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS or 0.5 percent in Peru in 2003 with 5,000 peopled who died from HIV/AIDS. This is significantly more than the United States, who had a rate of 0.3% and had only 4,200 deaths. According to the database Peru had a very high risk of disease. Such diseases that posed a threat were bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A and typhoid.

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