Disease resilience in rural Bangladesh: the adoption and practice of curative self-care

Abstract

The importance of resilience and people-centred risk reduction of disease have led to growing interest in local coping strategies in disease management. These ideas resonate strongly with the concept of self-care which has been identified as a primary public health resource and a predominant response to ill health in disease endemic environments such as Bangladesh. A series of qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to examine the adoption of self-care in rural Bangladesh to understand how human coping and resilience is achieved. Findings identify how self-care is implemented as part of resilience to disease through the utilisation of finite natural resources and seeking cost-effective healthcare solutions. It is advocated that self-care acts as an effective disease management strategy enabling households to cope with endemic disease. Although it does not represent a panacea for health equity, self-care could provide a mechanism for achieving better equity and social justice in health.