Policies on Health Development and Information and Communication Technologies: the case of the Yurimaguas, Peru

MISCIONE, G; AIZENBERG, L

Proceedings of the Cultural attitudes towards technology and communication Conference,Karlstad, 2004

Murdoch University

Lugar: Karlstad; Año: 2004; p. 349 - 362

This study is based on the ethnographic study of a telemedicine system implemented in North-Eastern Peru. During the last years, in High Amazon, this system has been connecting the hospital of Yurimaguas with the health care centers scattered throughout that area of the jungle. Patients? transport through the hubs of the public health care system relies on rivers and wooden boats, but voice and data can flow directly through the channels rationally designed upon the existing health care organization. The time required to reach a doctor might have been the main distance between different medicines, or the most believable justification for everyone not to follow new paths to recovery. Now medical talks?effectiveness depends on the ability to understand, and on the uncertain relation between what is told and what is done. People?s perception of health is changing: new habitual-trajectories of healing through medical plants, pills, injections and magical rites are being collectively consolidated. No medicine is believed to be the right one, social paths through traditional and imported hopes of recovery are emerging.Here, the public health institution is developing through electronic means of communication; the diverse social environment affects directly and indirectly the use of the telemedicine system, which is evolving accordingly with how scientific health care is perceived. From promoters? standpoint other treatments can seem an obstacle to system effectiveness, but we argue that people?s perception of their health, embedded in their normal patterns of action has to be understood, and then considered in evaluation, design, and future policies. New perspectives on policy-making emerge remaining sensitive to the on-going social dynamics.