Document Type

Article

Department

Population Health (East Africa)

Abstract

Background: Ethno-medical maternal health care practices during pregnancy are extensive among women especially in Low and Middle Income Countries. Little is known as to why there is an extensive use and reliance on ethno-medical malnutrition remedies over biomedical care, and that they can stand the test of time, even though some are detrimental to human health or based on scientifically incorrect notions.

Methods: From September 2014 through April 2018, a narrative review rather than a systematic review format was conducted in PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science to identify and evaluate all associated literature. This review brings in constructivists’ and Dawkin’s memetic theory of evolution in understanding the cognitive basis of the different ethno-medical explanatory models of maternal nutrition and health, and consequently adoption of interventions.

Findings: Ethno-medical pregnancy nutritional interventions are meant to safeguard the mother and foetus. Ethno-medical nutritional beliefs and practices is a way of life filled with symbolic meanings which women in a given social group have learned over many years through various agents of socialization and help women make sense of and cope with pregnancy complications in order to survive and stay healthy. They are enforced using superstitious threats and blind trust that cannot be verified. These practices are varied hence cannot be generalized to people of the same cultural group or in different generations making it difficult to design a unified biomedical intervention strategy.

Conclusion: Women have cultural beliefs (memes) about maternal health that have been in existence for centuries, which give meaning to adverse pregnancy outcomes and the appropriate remedies to adopt. Biomedical interventions’ meme needs to align themselves with ethno-medical memes. Otherwise, competition for survival will arise, their effectiveness can easily be constrained hence having a hard time proving their survival value.

Comments

This work was published before the author joined Aga Khan University.

Publication (Name of Journal)

International Journal of Nursing and Health Care Research

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29011/2688-9501.101275

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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